Curtly Ambrose

Curtly Elconn Lynwall Ambrose (born September 21, 1963) is a former West Indian fast bowler.With Walsh, he formed one of the greatest opening bowling partnerships in history, as evidenced by the 421 wickets they shared in the 49 Test matches they played together.

Born in Swetes, Antigua he played for the Leeward Islands. He came to England in 1986 on a Viv Richards scholarship and played for Chester Boughton Hall in the Liverpool and District Cricket Competition taking 84 wickets in 362.1 overs at an average of 9.80. After playing for Littleborough in 1987, he was engaged by Northamptonshire County Cricket Club, and went on to represent the West Indian cricket team. Ambrose made his Test debut in April 1988 at Georgetown, Guyana against Pakistan and retired at the end of the England tour in August 2000.

In Test cricket, he had 98 caps, bowled 1,001 maiden overs (roughly two in every seven) and took 405 wickets (making him only the fifth to exceed the 400 barrier) at an average of 20.99. This superb average is marginally bettered only by fellow West Indians Malcolm Marshall (20.94) and Joel Garner (20.97) among bowlers who have taken more than 200 wickets. In addition, Ambrose also boasts the best economy rate of any of the ten bowlers who have taken 400 or more Test wickets, at 2.30 per over. His best performance was eight for 45 against England at Barbados in 1990 (in 34 Tests against England he took 164 wickets, dismissing Mike Atherton seventeen times); he took five wickets or better on 22 occasions, including seven wickets for one run against Australia at the WACA, in Perth, in 1993. He also bowled an infamous fifteen-ball over at the same ground: it contained nine no-balls and took twelve minutes to bowl, making it possibly the longest over in Test cricket. He overstepped the crease by a considerable margin and it was regarded that he deliberately did so to come closer to the batsmen to intimidate them.

In 176 one-day internationals, Ambrose took 225 wickets. Despite certain pretensions as a left-handed batsman, and a single Test fifty to his credit (53 against Australia in 1991), he did not distinguish himself with the bat.

Ambrose was a man of few words, refusing countless interview requests with the motto "Curtly talk to no man.

Having retired from cricket, Ambrose now plays guitar in a reggae band called Big Bad Dread and the Baldhead alongside former team-mate Richie Richardson.

He was placed at No. 3 in Shane Warne's list of the fifty greatest cricketers of his time, while Ian Botham in his book Botham's Century noted that, although "a cricketer who thrived on aggression and menace", Ambrose was "the most reluctant and detached of heroes", indeed "one of the quietest that I ever encountered". As a bowler, he was always "miserly accurate" but occasionally, when fired up, "as unforgiving and as devastating as a hurricane", and "virtually unplayable": But maybe of all these weapons, the most potent was his silence. Many fast bowlers have tried to put batsmen off their strokes by utilising various forms of verbal and physical intimidation. Curtly intimidated you with hush.

“Since retiring I don't watch a lot of cricket, I'm not really a lover of watching the game, however I do follow the fortunes of the West Indies Team” - Ambrose

International career