Cricket: A Modern Anthology. Jonathan Agnew

sight of Steele edging to Murray for 42. It was an inconclusive end to the series for Steele, whose two scores in the 40s represented a partial return to form but would not be enough to ensure him of a place on England’s winter tour. Holder had his 15th wicket in four Tests, a solid performance by a man whose steadfast bowling was often overshadowed by his more eye-catching colleagues.

      Miller took 32 minutes to score the first run of a knock that would build on the promise of the first innings, but then settled in against the spin of Richards and Fredericks. Knott squeezed runs to all parts of the field and completed a fifty by turning Holder to long leg for three. With 50 minutes plus 20 overs left, a flicker of hope for survival began to play in the minds of the England followers – only for part-time spinner Richards to bowl Miller with a quicker ball that beat his back-foot shot and flicked the pads. With only three tail-enders to bat, the game was up.

      Holding came back to administer the last rites. His fourth ball moved a little off the seam and took out Knott’s off stump; 196 for 8. With that wicket, Holding, who had not even warmed up enough to remove his sleeveless sweater, had become the first West Indian to take 13 wickets in a Test match. Roberts, meanwhile, was still waiting for his first. At last he got it when Lloyd took a brilliant diving catch just off the ground in the gully to remove Underwood. Roberts danced in relief.

      Holding raced in from the Vauxhall End one final time. A fast yorker beat Willis’s defensive effort and hit him on the foot; an easy lbw decision. At 4.20 pm, the series was over. Holding’s return in the second innings was 6 for 57, giving him an astonishing 14 for 149 in the match. The figures are impressive enough, but even more so for having been achieved on such an unhelpful wicket.

      Holding’s recollection of his performance is ‘just running in and bowling fast’, crediting the naivety of youth for his success. ‘It was such a flat pitch that if I had been more experienced I would have said, “This is not working. It is not worth all this hard work and strain on my body.” When you are young and excited you just run in fast and do what you do.’

      Willis notes, ‘Having bowled on the pitch, I know that there was nothing there to help the pace bowlers. But Michael managed to make it seem perfect for speed.’

      It was this match that confirmed Holding’s arrival in the very top bracket of fast bowlers, where he had only Roberts, Lillee and Thomson for company. It had been a spectacularly brief journey, gathering momentum after a promising, if stuttering, start in Australia, where his figures had not quite matched his potential. ‘If I had been English that would have been it for me,’ he said, recognising the West Indies’ selectors’ faith in him – although it seems unlikely that even England’s management could have resisted such a phenomenon, however unproven, at a time when any moderate fast bowler with one good leg stood a chance of selection.