Who Needs Style if You Can Play It to the Max?

There have been many fast bowlers down the years – Holding, Lillee, Hall – with actions graceful enough to set to music, but it’s probably fair to say that Max Walker wouldn’t be among them.

Walker had a method which fulfilled the basics of feet, chest and arms all being involved in the business of delivering the ball, but not necessarily at the same time.

The Australian’s death from cancer last month was a reminder that cricket is littered with examples of players who have thrived at the highest level despite being regarded as less than orthodox. Walker was an important foil to a bowler like Lillee, and while they were the aesthetic equivalent of Michelangelo and the bloke at the emulsion counter in B&Q, when it came to getting the ceiling painted, they both – in their different ways – got the job done.

Same with Mike Procter, or Bob Willis. Procter let go of the ball off his right foot, or appeared to, which is fine if you’re a left-armer, which he wasn’t, while Willis had a run-up which started in another postcode, and was about as graceful as a World War One Sop with Camel trying to take off from a potato field.

However, they were lethal on their day, Procter getting bowleds and lbws with 90 mph inswinging toe-cap crushers, and Willis, at the same speed, concentrating more on the ear, nose and throat department. When Willis hit the stumps, it was largely because the batsman had retreated far enough sideways to be unable to reach them.

Neither were all the West Indian quicks as graceful as Holding and Roberts. When Colin Croft was bowling, a quick single to get to Holding’s end was even thought of as a good idea, with Croft’s barrel-chested wide-of-the-crease release meaning that a right hander was invariably having to play at (or more often duck out of the way of) deliveries coming from mid-off.