Quietly fades Curtly

Curtly Ambrose and his magnificent, but tired, body can head off in peace to those fabulous beaches in Antigua. Those long legs, that seemed attached to chest rather than hip, can stretch themselves and let the gentle waves lap into them. Curtly Ambrose can relax, aware that his job was well done; aware too that a lot of batsmen around the world will secretly relish his desire to relax.

That tarantula on his head won’t look quite as forbidding any more; that predatory lower lip will look just a touch less vicious.

The years had taken their toll on Ambrose, the nip that scared a batsman into submission had lost its edge. But like the great fast bowlers in the game, and with four hundred Test wickets he storms into that club, he let the mind overcome the increasing inadequacies of his body. When he had bowled his last ball in international cricket, he was no longer a scary bowler but he was still a very very difficult bowler to play.

The secret lay in a beautiful action that demanded so little of his body. It lay in his ability to put the ball where he wanted to and it lay in the patience of an angler. In the last couple of years, Ambrose had stated his case very clearly; he was going to bowl to a spot on the pitch and if the batsmen wanted to score off him, they would have to come and take him on. There were no free runs with Ambrose, often there were no runs at all!

And yet, as batsman around the world will testify, it wasn't always like that. There was an aggressive streak in him, when his arm was thrown skyward, his wrist cocked like a spring about to explode, there was fire in the eyes. When he followed through, when he cast his eyes down at you from handshaking distance (with Ambrose it didn’t matter how far away he was, he always seemed to be at handshaking distance!), he instilled fear in a batsman. Those lips rumbled sometimes and for a man who hardly ever spoke, it must have felt like the sound of thunder.

Fast bowlers have evoked fear through the pace they generated, Ambrose created the same effect by sheer presence. He used his assets well. He knew that his height and the lovely high point of delivery ensured that the ball would always hit the bat a little higher than the batsman would like it to. And so, he bowled a wonderful length; a touch predictable but he knew that if a batsman wanted to score off him, he would either have to be content with nudging a ball around or he would have to take a chance. That explains that awesome economy rate. If Ambrose didn’t get wickets, he didn’t give away runs either; a wonderful lesson that was lost on the less intelligent generation that followed.

That he could not pass the torch on in the manner that his amazing predecessors did would hurt him. But it had little to do with his inability to pass on the tricks of the trade, it had more to do with the arrogance, with the limited skills of those that followed him. Had Franklyn Rose, Mervyn Dillon, Reon King and Nixon McLean shown either the commitment or the skill, Ambrose would probably have retired a year ago. He might at best have been the support bowler and surely that is how West Indies cricket would have liked it to be.

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine Ambrose as the third or even the fourth seamer in the side. Two strapping young men have zinged the ball around at a scary pace and have just retreated to third man and fine leg. The batsman wants to breathe a little more freely when up comes Ambrose to bowl an eight over spell for no more than fifteen runs. When the young guns come back, the scoreboard looks almost the same as it did when they took their sweaters. A quiet two years in that role and Ambrose could have retired in peace. Instead sadness and frustration will leave an inevitable after taste for when Ambrose rested after a mean spell, the floodgates opened and life suddenly became liveable, almost easy. The end of his spell was a sign that the party could begin.

Still, it must have helped Ambrose that Courtney Walsh at the other end, had an almost identical philosophy to life. Their names were synonymous in the last couple of years. When you said Ambrose and Walsh, you thought “and” was the middle name.

There is no doubt that without the equally persevering Walsh, Ambrose would have cast his boots away in disgust. He spoke very little, but he spoke more pointedly than Walsh did. Unlike Walsh, whose heart seemed to be buried in the deep recesses of a large body, and was coated by an impenetrable layer of dignity, Ambrose often wore it just a couple of layers beneath his skin. You could tell when Ambrose was angry, you couldn’t with Walsh. In the absence of his team-mate I suspect he would have spoken out a lot more.

The numbers will leave behind a wonderful legacy for Curtly Ambrose. They will tell of the number of times he cast a forbidding eye at defeat and blew it away with breathtaking spells of bowling. As the pitches in his native West Indies grew increasingly unpredictable, he grew increasingly unplayable for with his physical attributes and great skill he was unmatched on bad wickets.

Now he is gone and it is like half the roof has gone over the West Indian cottage. In recent times they have been vulnerable but now they will be exposed. If Walsh goes as well, and I suspect it is only the dream of being the first bowler to reach 500 wickets that will keep him going, the West Indies will, for the first time, look like lambs. Without weapons, the predators will be easy prey.

And Ambrose will sit by the beach, by the beautiful gentle waters. Those giant Herculean shoulders will no longer be available to prop up a falling structure. The next generation has to find its own claws while Curtly Ambrose, at last, draws them in.

Curtly Ambrose factfile

Harsha Bhogle

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