They Know Not of His Art
Fri, Jul 30, '04
(Editor's Note: Earlier this week, when the names of the five greatest West Indian cricketers were announced, Malcolm Marshall's name was strangely, and inexplicably, missing. In memory of the great fast bowler, CaribbeanCricket.com is republishing this tribute to Marshall by the late Tim Hector).
When Andy Roberts called to say Malcolm Marshall had died, I tried my level best to take the news calmly. I do not handle news of death, especially coming by way of the telephone, well. Someday I will overcome it.
But the news of Malcolm Marshall?s death was particularly devastating. So much so, that but for a speaking commitment to the Antigua Cricket Association and its President Andy Roberts, I did not leave home that day. Could not. Petrified.
Even I did not know how deeply cricket was commingled with my own person and personality. Let me explain. Last year I had spent a number of days with Malcolm Marshall, he in an adjoining hotel room. We went to the dining room together for all three meals, and talked cricket for most of the time after. He was there, in St Lucia, to receive a CARICOM award, and I was one of the panellists who selected the 25 sportspersons of the region, for CARICOM?s 25th anniversary. Malcolm Marshall was delighted to be receiving the honour. And I learnt, how deeply our cricketing heroes feel, when officially we take their superlative efforts for granted. I resolved then, that I would always seek to ensure recognition for the deserving and not "take things for granted" - Marshall?s words.
Naipaul had said that we reserve recognition for scholarship winners gone mad and failed cricketers. How much has changed since Naipaul?s Middle Passage of say 1962 the first year of Independence in these island and mainland states.
Now, I do not engage in conversations with great persons. Even with CLR James it took me a long time to engage in repartee. I listen, and if need be, I prod. But I never initiate. There is too much to be learnt from their preoccupations. Changing the line of their trajectory I, as learner, would be the loser.
But Malcolm Marshall wanted to question me! That shocked me, and even now that I am writing this the same sensation felt then, recurs.
Almost out of the blue, Malcolm Marshall asked me "What is the main secret of teaching?" It were as though he had bowled me a yorker, at full pace, spearing into my toe, but destined for the leg stump, regardless of what my defences were. To mix a metaphor, I ducked. As though from a bouncer chest high and trapped square-on.
I said how do you know I taught? He said he heard it from fellow Test players, and he named a Bajan friend of his whom I had lectured at University, and whom he said thought I was "the greatest". There was no escaping the question. Not even with this weave: Namely, that Barbados had produced some of the finest teachers. He cut me short with a sharp in-swinger. "I mean" he said "someone who had taught young people in this day and age." Again my defence had left the off stump exposed. And swiftly flattened.
"Look", said Marshall, "I am not talking about teaching methods some of that we got in qualifying to be a coach. I mean the r-e-a-l secret to make someone an e-n-t-h-u-s-i-a-s-t-i-c learner." For sure, this leg-cutter had removed the remaining middle stump, cutting in sharply from behind my back as I moved too far across the stumps, foolishly anticipating the straightish ball, as it wobbled in the air. That hat-trick so easily accomplished. A hopeless tail-ender. I had to stand and deliver. No more shilly-shallying.
I said that in my view, each student must feel that you, as teacher, guide, counsellor have no favourites, but you have a special interest in him or her, regardless of whether it is a class of 40 or 11. As soon as I said eleven, Marshall gave an ear to ear smile. Then quickly said, go over that again. I gave examples. Especially on what I call "indirect instruction." That is, directing at one person instruction meant for the other who was nearby and over-hearing. Marshall kept me on the subject for over an hour, and I found myself giving the utmost concentration to the subject. When it was all finished I felt as though I had been put through a wringer.
Only CLR James has ever had a similar effect on me. Andy Roberts, in deference to my old age, mostly spins at me, often leaving me stumped. Then supplying me with the footwork to meet the spin ? after being stumped. (By the way, I do not feel I am being ridiculed or vilified if I am called old and black. My friend Clarence Crump always says that I speak as if a century old. The point is, I?ve tried to incorporate into myself much of what went on from Newton to Stephen Hawking.)
Anyway, as we walked to breakfast next day, Marshall had "one last question". "How do you get the s-t-u-b-b-o-r-n to learn?" I said, one way, is to keep being deadly serious, with the greatest earnestness you can muster in the face of the stubbornness. Then one day, when you have something really crucial to impart to the person, give it in the form of a joke. You will have succeeded once he or she laughs his or her head off. Marshall turned around and gave me an enthusiastic handshake, a high-five in fact, and then laughed his head off. We both laughed. Because, we had kept up the pretense that we were talking about teaching, and not cricket, which was the real subject. The high-five though, made me feel like an honorary member of the West Indies team. I was on cloud nine.
Besides the immense pleasure Malcolm Marshall gave me a sense of new possibilities, in the glory of his immense achievement. This conversation had formed a deep bond. On his death I was so shattered, for the first time in my life, I did not listen to cricket, the Leewards playing in the semi-final of the Red Stripe Bowl. Self-inflicted Pain as antidote to pain. It was my involuntary way of observing the loss of "Maco" in all its tragic suddenness.
I hope by the above, you got the picture of how intensely and how seriously Marshall took his coaching job, the pedagogy of it. How he kept exploring to find ways to more effectively, if not most effectively impart what he knew. He had a most probing mind. Never settling for the mediocre. He spurned the commonplace and the self-satisfied mediocrity, whose fort? is as he said, the "crabs in the barrel syndrome." Honestly, I thought on reflection that if he had chosen to be a scientist, scientific method, though acquired, would have seemed native and natural.
And now to cricket. As I sat down to write, it came home forcefully to me that cricket is a batsman?s game. By that I mean it is relatively easy to write about a batsman, to convey style, to describe shots ? the steadiness of head, the foot-movement, the flow of bat into ball, the placement, the uncoiling of wrist into stroke with precision. Not so the bowler.
But let me try, without reference to CLR James, who was the acknowledged master of this otherwise difficult business, to my mind, as difficult as astro-physics.
Malcolm Marshall was not by height, 5ft 10 or 11, the fast-bowler?s fast bowler. But I have never seen anyone approach a wicket, from his slightly acute angular run, so fast. He sprinted. Over after over, he ran in at full speed. I refuse to believe that there was any similar sprinting fast bowler. Holding glided, silky smooth. Malcolm did a high octane sprint. The sheer athleticism was in itself joy of a special kind.
The delivery was somewhat un-orthodox, seemingly chest-on. But how Marshall could use his body! He could go wide on the crease or close to the stumps, and produce a prodigious in-swinger. From either position he could produce the away-swinger. And around the wicket he was a master too. The use of his wrist, snapping or firm, was craftsmanship of a high order.
Let an example suffice. Dave Joseph, though known as a striker of the ball, has, to my mind, fine defensive technique. He is on debut for the Leeward Islands at the Recreation Grounds. Marshall is in his pomp. Dave Joseph, however is coming forward, copy-book fashion, head well over the ball, elbow cocked, bat and pad close together, eye on the ball like a hawk. In between and off the other bowlers he had played, not some cracking shots, but well timed shots. He looked like a touch player. Marshall thought. You could feel the thought cooking beyond the saut? point.
At the beginning of the next over to Dave Joseph, Marshall switches to around the wicket. He puts the ball on middle-and-off and Dave Joseph properly watches it swing away. The next ball is wider. And Dave Joseph watches it go by. But you can sense that Dave Joseph had read Marshall?s mind and is anticipating the in-swinger. Around the wicket, Marshall does not come from close to the stumps as before. He had run in faster in my mind?s eye. Gone wide of the stumps and the ball curls in the air, leaving Dave. And, it would seem, that on hitting the pitch it cut back the other way. Dave across and behind, played for the in-swinger, but the ball straightened and brushed the glove and on to the keeper. Marshall, in memory?s eye was appealing, in certainty, even before the keeper had gathered. He had worked it out. The ball did precisely what he wanted it to do. It was art: idea, movement, line, stimulating the senses of the viewer, and on the grand scale too.
Let us go back in time. It is June 1988, Malcolm Marshall at Old Trafford, turns at the Stretford End. My vision from memory says, that he had kicked up his right leg like a prancing, dandying thorough-bred. Then he begins his sharp, short sprint. The batsman senses that this is the express delivery. Malcolm Marshall who has the quickest arm action I have seen, looks like a blur, in well directed motion. The batsman, I suspect, sees the ball on or about off stump. And since Marshall had come from the middle of the crease, presumed that it would carry on outside off-stump. Naturally, an opener by technique, the batsman thrust out his front pad, and with some ?lan, raises the bat on high. (Derek Michael style for those my age) The ball cannons into the pad and Mike Gatting, scoreless, is on his way.
There was the fluidity of thought, flowing into motion, finding the tragic flaw with clinical certitude.
I cannot claim to have seen all the greats. I saw Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller, Freddie Trueman, Andy Roberts, Dennis Lillee but in that highly select group Malcolm Marshall was the best user of the crease I have ever seen. And not infrequently, he had radar like precision. He could probe a weakness, not by persistence, but with a series of subtle variations on a theme, like the composer Elgar, and he would know exactly when to deliver the coup de gr?ce. His field-placings to his own bowling was a masterpiece of both orchestration and strategy which even the great General, George Patton, would have envied.
I doubt that there was a better bowling brain in all cricket, than Malcolm. Not even the legendary George Lohmann. Besides, Marshall could cut his pace and be mesmerising, and bowl at full throttle on a flat track and be devastating as in India.
Genius is a law unto itself. It is though, 90 per cent perspiration. Marshall must have worked long and hard striving for perfection, till those who saw it, and could not fully comprehend it, like Christopher Martin Jenkins, thought it was "intuitive cunning". It was nothing of the kind. It was in truth, a military computer, programmed by assiduous application and dedication to craft, downloading the precise smart-bomb, at the strategic weakness laid bare, with unerring accuracy.
But perhaps words have failed me in describing this mastery of craft, this beauty of art, which was the exclusive property of Malcolm Marshall, the magnificent. Sometimes in my moments of abstraction Malcolm Marshall reminds of another meteor, named Malcolm too died at a mere 39, who lifted himself from pimp to such magnificent heights, as to be, in itself, a modern miracle.
Malcolm Marshall, I am told nearly drowned at a very tender age. He was saved. After that near-brush with childhood death, as he said, it was "Cricket, cricket, cricket." Until there is no cricket, at the end of time, cricket ensures not just intimations of, but Marshall?s immortality.
Since words failed, let figures suffice. In 408 first class matches, Malcolm Denzil Washington Marshall scalped 1,651 at an average of 19 runs apiece. Phenomenal. In Test cricket his 376 wickets in 81 Tests cost 20 runs each. The miserly Curtly Ambrose is bettered. Astonishing. He had begun his Test career in Bangalore, after only one first class match, in which he took 6 wickets against Jamaica for 77 - I think - finishing at the Oval in 1991. His strike rate of a wicket every 46.77 balls, is not singular in that Waqar Younis of Pakistan in 55 Tests and 277 wickets has the best strike rate at a wicket every 41.11 deliveries. And, Alan Donald of South Africa is second with 55 Tests and a wicket every 45.99 deliveries. When either Waqar or Donald reach Marshall?s 81 Tests I am almost certain Marshall will have the better strike rate. At any rate, Marshall?s strike rate in over 81 Tests, to use understatement, is truly magnificent.
Anything else? Believe it or not, I was once tempted to call the publishers of the Bible of cricket, Wisden, saying it had made a mistake when it recorded that in the 1982 English County season, a restricted season, Marshall took some 134 wickets at about 9 runs each, I think, in some 800 overs! That will not be equalled and never be bettered, I aver. What an incredible piece of stamina allied to extraordinary skill, plus commitment of a rare order.
One has to be careful in writing of the super-great, that it does not all appear like Matthew Arnold?s sweetness and light, the hero with an angelic halo around his head. Such biographical sketches lead revisionists to dismantle the hero, with the discovery of some glossed-over chink, in the otherwise shining armour.
In the 1980 series Marshall was banned from the Test at Lord?s as punishment. In the Test before the hallowed Lord?s Test, and bowling to Geoff Boycott he had him caught behind off a thick edge. The umpire Don Oslear did not see it that way. Not out. Marshall is said to have let Boycott have it, cutting the boy down, with some choice adjectives going before the word "cheat". When we were in St Lucia, I asked Marshall about it. He was still, 18 years later, boiling with visible anger. "You can excuse a new Test player for not walking when clearly out. But when established and great players do that, it wrecks anything called the values of the game. And the young watching, grow up valueless. As the Trinidadians say - it is then a straight case of, "all fall down."
I tell you the truth my eyes must have popped. I know I was speechless. And Marshall read my mind. "Surprised eh," he said "you journalists should listen to us more and you all would write a lot better."
Did you get what had just happened? A man born poor, in a little rock of an island, Barbados, mecca of West Indies cricket though, the off-spring of colonial conquest, whose father died in a motorbike crash when he was but a year old, understood, fully understood, that cricket was a game, but far more than a game. It was a carrier of eternal values, which values, put under siege by its practitioners, signalled the collapse of civilisation into barbarism, however abundant wealth might be.
It may well be, that Marshall was more than the greatest fast bowler, a good all-rounder, beginning in 1972 as a school-boy opening batsman, who went on to score seven first class centuries, and a nimble fielder. Maybe he was too, a magnificent keeper of the flame, Toussaint?s flame the eternal flame of human values. To come from Martin Carter?s ?Nigger Yard? to the acme of civilisation, in just over 300 years is a lesson in human growth, so profound, that it makes a mockery of distinguished theories of economic determinism. At any rate, that is, how I see Malcolm Marshall. (The present tense in ?see? there is deliberate.)
It is necessary here and now to place Malcolm Marshall in his rightful place. He belongs undoubtedly, among the outstanding sporting figures of the twentieth century, especially if it is done decade by decade. Here goes.
The 1900?s belongs without a doubt to the boxing heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson. The 1910?s goes to Jim Thorpe. The 1920?s Babe Ruth is in command. The 1930?s, the great Joe Louis, Sir Don Bradman and Jesse Owens. The 1940?s Sir Stanley Matthews. The 1950?s Jackie Robinson and Sir Roger Bannister. The 1960?s presents two all time greats, Pel? and Sir Gary Sobers, plus Wilt Chamberlain. The 1970?s deserves but one figure, Muhammad Ali. The 1980?s Sir Vivian Richards and "Sir" Malcolm Marshall, the prime figures in the West Indian domination of an international sport, cricket, for an entire decade, an unprecedented feat. The 1990?s calls to mind one name and one name only, Michael Jordan.
I may have found no room for the great Kenyan long distance runners beginning with Kipchonge Keino. Or for the great Ethiopian two-time Olympic marathon champ Abebe Bikela, or Magic Johnson, or Kareem Abdul Jabar, or even Hank Aaron, nor for Maradonna and Frantz Beckenbauer. Golf and tennis were not included for lack mass appeal. Women would go into their own category.
But no one, would seriously dispute that "Sir" Malcolm Marshall definitely belongs in this select group, unless they know not of his art and practic part. A knighthood though late is his posthumous just due for being among the sporting heroes of the 20th century. Nuff said.
I ceased to mourn when I heard that Malcolm Marshall?s last wish was to be able to go round the region, through a Foundation, alerting the region of the necessity of early detection of the colon cancer which cut him down in his prime, and weeks after his marriage, after 13 years of courtship. He was in his own inimitable way reminding us of Walter Rodney?s words, "Don?t Mourn, Organise!" That is the mantle we must carry forward, like Marshall?s improbable in-swinger to Gatting, wherever and whatever our point of engagement.
I found Malcolm Marshall, despite his stellar achievements, amazingly modest. He was entirely without airs. And too, unlike genius which is often intolerable and pernickety, even eccentric, Malcolm Marshall was most strikingly affable.
Death, it appears, is random. It is, for sure, a heartless thief in the night. Malcolm Marshall?s death had that effect. Numbing. Until I remembered and pictured, the ancestors smiling, happy to welcome him home for he had raised to new heights the ceiling of human achievement. May his wife Connie and his two children, Mali and Sheryl find in him, and through him, and for him, the stamina to endure, the emotional athleticism to overcome the hurdle of his untimely death and all the other untimely, even unfathomable riddles to come. Above all may the light of Malcolm Denzil Marshall?s illuminating life radiate in them and with them, always ? and all ways.
Our banner draped for you...
Dear Malcolm
if it must be
you speak no more with me
nor smile no more with me
nor bowl no more for me
then let me take
a patience and a calm
for even now the greener leaf explodes
sun brightens stone
and all the river burns.
Now from the mourning vanguard moving on
dear Malcolm I salute you and I say
Death and globalisation will not find us thinking, that we die.
(Apologies to Martin Carter)
* This article was written in November, 1999 just after Malcolm Marshall succumbed to colon cancer at the age of 41. Tim Hector himself passed away in November 2002. Hector's 'Fan The Flames' columns are available online here.
