Malcolm Marshall

Malcolm Denzil Marshall was born on 18 April 1958 in Bridgetown, Barbados. His father, a policeman, was killed in a road accident when he was a baby, and he was introduced to cricket by his maternal grandfather, learning the game at the beach and in the playground. He began as a batsman, then found that he could strike back as a bowler. He combined speed with skill and intelligence.

He made his first-class debut for Barbados in 1977–78, taking 6 for 77 against Jamaica, and went on to play his first Test on the tour of India. For the West Indies he played 81 Tests between 1978 and 1991, taking 376 wickets at an average of 20.94, the best average of any bowler with 300 or more Test wickets, and a West Indian record until Courtney Walsh overtook him in 1998–99. His best Test figures were 7 for 22.

Marshall was the most successful Test bowler of the 1980s, with 235 wickets at 18.47 over five years, in the great West Indies team that dominated world cricket. He took 21 or more wickets in each of seven successive series from 1982–83 to 1985–86, and set a West Indian record of 35 wickets in a series in 1988. He was also a capable lower-order batsman, with ten Test fifties and seven first-class centuries.

For Hampshire, for whom he played from 1979 to 1993, he took 826 first-class wickets, and in 1982 his 134 wickets remain the most by any bowler in an English season since the number of County Championship games was reduced in 1969. He also played for Natal in South Africa. Over his first-class career he took 1,651 wickets at 19.10, and 157 in one-day internationals.

He retired from Tests after the Oval Test of 1991, bowling Graham Gooch for his 376th victim, and in 1996 became coach of both Hampshire and the West Indies. During the 1999 World Cup, where he was coaching the West Indies, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He died in Bridgetown on 4 November 1999, aged 41, only 40 days after marrying Connie Earle, his partner of 13 years. Clive Lloyd said he was one of the best fast bowlers the West Indies had produced, and the Malcolm Marshall Trophy keeps his memory alive.