There has been no more fearsome paceman in the history of the game than Malcolm Marshall. Short of physical stature, Marshall was a giant in every sense, all raw pace packed into this small, lithe frame that uncoiled at the first hint of battle and made the ball talk on even the most docile of surfaces.
Marshall was soft-spoken, when he did speak on the field at all which was seldom, but he didn’t need to speak, did he? Not when he expressed his intent with his eyes, when he made the ball move at pace, when he skidded on to the batsmen with all the acceleration of a bullet train. A lovely man off the park, Marshall wasn’t someone you ticked off on the field, as Dilip Vengsarkar found out to his detriment more than once.
On this day in 1983, Marshall delivered one of his most searing spells in Test cricket, on the relative flatbed that the Green Park pitch in Kanpur was. Still smarting from their unexpected defeat four months previously in the final of the World Cup at Lord’s, West Indies had stacked up 454 in the first innings of the first of six Tests when it was India’s turn to bat, midway through the second day. In a spectacular burst of 8-5-9-4, Marshall ripped the heart out of the Indian batting. Sunil Gavaskar was dismissed for a second-ball duck to trigger a procession that included Aunshuman Gaekwad (4), Mohinder Amarnath (0) and Vengsarkar (14). India were hopping at 18 for four, and if they did scramble to 207, it was entirely on the back of a ninth-wicket stand of 117 between Roger Binny (39) and Madan Lal (63*).
Marshall finished with four for 19, and took four for 47 in India’s second-innings 164 to bowl the Caribbeans to a commanding win. In all, he took 376 wickets in 81 Tests and 157 in 136 ODIs, but tragically lost his battle with cancer in November 1999, when only 41.
