Form is permanent

When one 15-year reign is followed by another, it’s only right that the changing of the guard should involve an almighty struggle. That’s what happened in the first half of the 1990s, when West Indies and Australia produced a trilogy of memorable Test series that ended with one all-time-great team succeeding another. Australia were on the up, West Indies in slow decline, and they met halfway during an epic contest in 1992-93. At that time there was almost nothing between the sides. In fact, there was only one thing: Sir Curtly Ambrose.

The teams went to Perth for the fifth and final Test with the score 1-1. It was a Test Championship final in nature if not name, and there was widespread anticipation of an unyielding battle to determine who was the best team in the world. Not on Curtly’s watch. He took such devastating advantage of a helpful pitch that the match and series were over by tea on the first day. Anti-climaxes don’t come much more memorable.

His figures of 18-9-25-7 are spectacular enough, yet within those came one of the most famous spells in Test history: seven for one in 32 balls. Those numbers are a decent summary of everything that was great about Ambrose: his ability to sense and seize the moment, his constant wicket-taking menace, and – crucial, this – his suffocating economy. Seven for one. Seven for one. Seven for one.

Most of Ambrose’s greatest performances came when he or his team were under extreme pressure. Adversity was his greatest source of energy. In that 1992-93 series, West Indies were 1-0 down with two to play, and knew that an Australian win in either match would end their 13-year unbeaten run in Test series. Curtly couldn’t accept that.

The rivalry really got going two years earlier, when Australia went to the Caribbean fancying their chances of dethroning West Indies. A nasty series ensued, during which Australia were put in their place far more emphatically than the 2-1 scoreline suggested.

By the time West Indies went to Australia in 1992, things had changed. They were playing their first Test series in 15 months and the first without the trio of Sir Vivian Richards, Jeff Dujon and Malcolm Marshall. Sir Richie Richardson was captaining them in a full series for the first time, and Ambrose was irritated that even the people of the Caribbean seemed to think they had little chance.

He was almost comically unlucky in the first three Tests yet still had a fine return of 14 wickets at 25. There are some who feel that the turning point of the Test series came during a one-day international. In the Benson & Hedges World Series finals against Australia, played between the third and fourth Tests, Dean Jones asked Ambrose to remove his white wristbands. Ambrose rarely lost his temper, but when he did there were consequences. After failing in his attempt to “knock Dean Jones out with the ball”, he settled for combined figures of eight for 58 in the best-of-three finals. The third match was not required.

From there it was straight to Adelaide for the fourth Test, where he took 10 for 120, including Steve Waugh and Allan Border in both innings. The brutish lifter to dismiss a fiercely determined Border for one in the second innings was almost comically emphatic.

Australia, chasing 186, slipped to 74 for seven before heroic batting from the debutant Justin Langer and the tailenders Tim May and Craig McDermott inched them towards a series victory and immortality. The fact it was Australia Day, and May’s birthday, added to an increasingly powerful sense of destiny. As the Aussies got closer to their target, the crowd started singing Waltzing Matilda in an attempt to alleviate the tension.

Border sat with the rest of the Australian players in the viewing area. He had an old cricket ball that he played with in times of stress, flipping it from hand to hand, shining it and picking the seam. No ball in cricket history has been worked on as much as Border’s that afternoon. This, as Gideon Haigh put it, was Border’s Moby Dick. For over a decade he had been beaten and beaten up by the West Indies, losing six consecutive series. He was one of their most respected opponents – nobody who played five Tests or more against them in the 1980s had a higher average than Border’s 46.41 – yet his Australia teams could not lay a glove on them until now.

The last pair of May and McDermott, who came together with 42 needed, moved to within one run of a tie, two of victory. A McDermott pull shot hit the shin of the short-leg Desmond Haynes, who knew little about it. “There it is!” said the commentator Greg Chappell. “Oh no it’s not.” Two balls later McDermott tried to avoid a lifter from Courtney Walsh and was given out caught behind by Darrell Hair. Walsh did not turn round to appeal and was halfway through a lap of honour when Hair raised his finger, so certain was he that McDermott had gloved it. To this day, however, it is unclear whether that was the case. Had DRS existed, the third umpire would probably have had a nervous breakdown.

When McDermott was given out Border stood up and slammed his worry ball into the ground with such force that it rebounded to hit the ceiling. Steve Waugh reckons it was 15 minutes before anyone in the Australian team said a word. “AB took it hard,” said Ian Healy in his autobiography, Hands & Heals. “That was his big chance, and probably his last chance, to beat the West Indies, who’d been bouncing him since 1979. Geez, this game can hurt.”

To compound Australia’s numbing misery, the deciding Test was at Perth – the fastest, bounciest wicket in the world, where the West Indies’ fast bowlers had smashed Australia out of sight in three previous Tests. When Border was reminded me of the West Indies’ record at the Waca in early January, just after the third Test, he was bullish. “Different personnel, different wicket, very different team … I wouldn’t write us off yet,” he said. “We were supposed to win here [at Sydney]. Maybe we’ll win at Perth.”

That confident hypothesis did not take into account the manner of their defeat at Adelaide - cricket’s equivalent of an injury-time equaliser, when gold and green ribbons were already being metaphorically tied to the Frank Worrell Trophy - or the inescapable reality of facing Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Ambrose, Ian Bishop and Ambrose on a trampoline. There were only four days between the Tests; Australia could have done with four weeks. “Perth came too soon after Adelaide,” wrote Healy. “I think the despondency we carried contributed to our effort there. We were crabby, distracted and looking for enemies.”

There was an unusual, if understandable negativity among the Australian team as they wrestled with the impotent frustration of watching their dream evaporate. “We didn’t expect to lose in two and a half days at Perth,” said Healy, “but we hardly thought we had a chance of winning either.”

Mark Taylor was dropped after a poor series, which meant Langer took on the unusual role of opener on his home ground. “In many ways I’d come off this great high of my first Test match, which I still talk about to this day, but it was also a low because we’d lost the Test and we had to play the West Indies at the Waca,” he says. “I also knew that us losing at Adelaide had an impact on Allan Border. The pressure was really on him, the pressure was therefore on us, Mark Taylor had been dropped, there was a lot going on. And the West Indies, true to form in those days at the Waca, they made a mess of us, didn’t they?”

The contrast with the mood in the Australian and West Indies dressing-rooms could barely have been more acute. “Going to Perth, we knew we were going to win that Test,” said Jimmy Adams. “Don't ask me how. We just knew.” They had celebrated their win at Adelaide with a limbo party, at which Richardson played guitar and sang a few songs. Sir Garfield Sobers addressed the room, announcing that “form is temporary and class is permanent”. West Indies, who were so close to going 2-0 down, were now 1-1 with power to add.

They were even happier when they saw the pitch on the first morning. The curator Scott Hamilton, worried about cracks opening up, left an unusual amount of grass on the wicket; that, allied to a bit of moisture and the trademark bounce, had Ambrose salivating. “We looked at the pitch on the morning of the game, and it looked ripe for fast bowling,” he said. “I remember saying to Richie, ‘Skipper, if you win the toss, we will win the match’.” (Ambrose liked to make such promises. Before the Melbourne Test of 1996-97, with West Indies 2-0 down, he matter-of-factly told the dressing-room: “Gentlemen, don’t worry, I’m taking ten in this match.” He was wrong, but only just: his figures of nine for 72 settled the match inside three days.)

Richardson didn’t win the toss, but it didn’t matter because Border batted first. The decision received hardly any criticism, at the time or subsequently, more evidence of cricket’s peculiar value system whereby only those those captains who err by fielding first go into infamy. “I was shocked, totally surprised, and could not understand their decision,” said Ambrose in his autobiography, Time to Talk. “I’m not just saying this because we won the game but any team would have had to have bowled first on that pitch. It was a big mistake on Allan Border’s part as we would have had a hard time negotiating Craig McDermott, Merv Hughes and Jo Angel on that surface.”

The contrast was left unsaid. West Indies had Ambrose but also Bishop and Walsh, both close to their peak, and the debutant Anderson Cummins. Australia started reasonably well, reaching lunch on 59 for two; Bishop dismissed Langer and Steve Waugh, who was enduring a short and largely unsuccessful spell at number three. He never batted there again after this Test. Plenty thought that, at 27 and with an average of 35.76 from 49 Tests, Waugh was finished. In the next 11 years he played another 119 Tests and averaged 57.73. But on that day a combination of the pitch, the bowling and Waugh’s mental state meant that he almost threw the towel in.

“Only once in my career did I face up and say to myself, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to score any runs. This is too hard,’” he wrote in his autobiography, Out of My Comfort Zone. “The pitch was as hard as a cat’s head and came complete with a green tinge and bounce that reared off a length like a cobra striking at a mongoose … I was ‘cooked’ mentally, like a pulverised boxer awaiting the death knell. No escape seemed possible.”

And that was before Ambrose hit his straps. He did not make the batsmen play enough in the morning and said “the radar was way off”. Though he had good-looking figures of none for 14 from eight overs, he knew he was nowhere near his own standards. Ambrose didn’t go around telling people he was a perfectionist; he just was. During the lunch break he sat alone – “the guys knew when to leave me be” – and administered a furious self-bollocking. At the end of the interval, his captain Richardson finally approached.

“Big fella, how you feeling?”

“I’m ready to bowl.”

He found his range straight away. Mark Waugh was dropped at second slip by a leaping Phil Simmons and then almost dragged a big off-cutter onto the stumps. There was no need for anything more spectacular than accuracy, such was the dual impact of Ambrose’s bounce and the pitch. This was Perth squared – the batsmen had to worry about the usual vertical threat and also the unusual horizontal movement. That was demonstrated by the monstrous delivery that dismissed Mark Waugh for nine. It moved a little off the seam and roared from a good length to take the edge as Waugh pushed defensively. The wicket-keeper Junior Murray took the catch and Ambrose celebrated by slugging the air with both hands. He was into his work.

In his next over he landed a devastating one-two to change the mood of the match. One moment Australia were 90 for three; two balls later they were 90 for five and had lost their twin rocks, David Boon and Border. The in-form Boon, restored to his old position of opener for a year to bridge the gap between Geoff Marsh and Michael Slater, had played superbly to reach 44, an innings full of meaty cut strokes. Ambrose had no interest in feeding Boon’s cut, and instead got one to spit on off stump. Boon had to play and was caught off the splice by the diving Richardson in a wide slip position.

The length to dismiss both Waugh and Boon, just full of good, was immaculate. Ambrose called it the Perth-fect length. He didn’t attack the top of off stump, he attacked the top of the bat. Six of the seven were caught behind or in the slips. Against Ambrose it was normal for the ball to get big on a batsman; at Perth it got huge.

“Some guys would get carried away with that bounce and also the movement, but Curtly identified that to take advantage you had to bowl particular lines and particular lengths,” says Boon. “He exploited pretty much every bit of help in that pitch. His greatest strengths were his control, his ability to obtain bounce out of any pitch – let alone that one at Perth – and to identify what his length should be. Once he did get on a roll, he was quite relentlessness. To come in on a pitch like that, with a guy that good and bowling as well as he could, was always going to be a difficult task.”

Border could vouch for that. He was the next man in, and needed 50 runs to overtake Sunil Gavaskar as the leading run scorer in Test history. At 37 and with the next West Indies series two years away, this was his last chance to defeat them. He walked busily to the crease as usual, and then Ambrose mowed him down first ball. It was another snorter that lifted, seamed and demanded an instinctive defensive stroke that ended with an edge through to Murray. “An absolute beauty” was Richie Benaud’s verdict on Channel 9. Ambrose’s celebration, easily the most delirious of his seven wickets, was a huge compliment to Border. It would not have felt like it at the time. In perhaps the two most important innings of his career, spread across four days, he had scored one run and received two unplayable deliveries from Ambrose.

Border would go on to get the first pair of his first-class career at the cruellest time. Healy came into the match after a pair at Adelaide, and made it three ducks in a row when he edged an injudicious drive to first slip.

This was a tough, brilliant Australian batting line-up – between them the top seven would end up with 850 Test caps and over 54,000 runs – but Ambrose broke their will. It was too much for them: the pace, the bounce, the movement, the accuracy, the aura, the post-Adelaide fatalism.

And, believe it or not, the grin. “He was like a smiling assassin,” says Langer. “He smiled all the time, and it used to kill you. Some other bowlers would get angry and sledge you. Ambrose was the opposite. If you played and missed, he’d smile. If you left the ball, he’d smile. If he hit you on the body, he’d smile. If you hit him for four, he’d smile. If he got you out he did that double handclap and was laughing! It was really intimidating. It was a bloody nightmare.”

Hughes, the next man after Healy, spooned a drive that was well taken by Keith Arthurton running back from cover. By now the scorers were scrambling around for details of Ambrose’s spell – five for nine since lunch, five for one off 23 balls since he dismissed Mark Waugh.

Langer grew up at the Waca and knew how hard it was to start an innings on that pitch at the best of times, never mind against a rampant Ambrose. “If it takes 20 balls to get in on most grounds around the world, at the Waca it takes 30. It’s a really hard place to get in, but when you do there’s no better place to bat. Our blokes just couldn’t get in that day.” Once Australia’s demise started with the wicket of Mark Waugh, only Damien Martyn hinted at getting in – and even he was out to his 30th delivery, edging a drive to second slip. The debutant Jo Angel also edged a drive and Ambrose had seven for one in 32 deliveries.

He finally conceded two runs in his 18th over, though he might have had an eighth wicket when McDermott somehow survived despite being hit on the pad in front of middle and leg by a very full delivery. Shane Warne was run out soon after, a consequence of Australia trying to get as many as possible at the other end, to complete a stunning demise from 85 for two to 119 all out.

The timing could not have been better. ‘‘I firmly believe that he bowled within himself the majority of times,” says Boon, “and he had the ability to step it up when he really needed to do so.” There was enormous mutual respect between Ambrose and Walsh and the Australian batsmen – the kind you only get when true champions recognise one another as worthy adversaries. “He was the most complete bowler I played against,” said Steve Waugh, “and the guy who tormented Australian teams more than anyone else.”

Ambrose rated it his fourth best spell overall – behind more overtly match-winning spells in the fourth innings against England in 1990 and 1994 and South Africa in 1992 – but his best for rhythm. “There was no one in world cricket at that time who could have subdued me,” he said in Time to Talk. “Not even Sir Donald Bradman in his pomp, or Sir Viv Richards or Sir Garfield Sobers. I was unstoppable. Everything was perfect.” The pitch was helpful but wickets did not come for free; the other fast bowlers took two for 86 between them.

There are times when Ambrose was driven by emotion and pride to spectacular effect, such as against England at Port of Spain in 1994, but this was a clinical, almost dispassionate dismantling. You can understand why, after the wicket of Martyn, the commentator Greg Chappell said “it’s not really a six for one spell”. There were no throat balls or flying stumps. But greatness takes many forms, and is often about the mundane demonstration of excellence under pressure. Ambrose’s spell, in my ways than one, was a masterpiece of economy.

The only run in his 32-ball spell came from an inside-edge. He may not have said anything on the field but he sure knew how to nag batsmen. “When you face Ambrose it’s like batting in a fishnet,” says Langer. “You feel suffocated because you can’t move, you can’t score. If you’ve got some physical courage and you’re not intimidated by the thought of getting hurt, the biggest pressure in the game is when you can’t score runs. That’s what Ambrose did. You just could not score runs off him. I got off the mark in Test cricket with three runs down the ground at the Adelaide Oval, and I honestly reckon that’s the last time I ever drove him. I played another six Tests against him and I never drove him. It was unbelievable.”

When West Indies batted, Richie Richardson launched a calculated counter-attack to ram home the advantage. He made 49 from 40 balls and by the close West Indies were 135 for one. The rest was a formality. The wicket became a little easier; more relevant was that Australia’s spirit had been crushed. Simmons panelled 80 and Arthurton 77 to secure a lead of 203, and Bishop took six for 40 to bowl Australia out for 178 in their second innings. Ambrose settled for a couple, which gave him match figures of nine for 79 and a series record of 33 wickets at 16.42.

Ambrose was at his absolute peak. For a four-year period between 1990 and 1994, bookended by his match-winning spells against England, he played 28 Tests and took 150 wickets at 17.80. His career average of 20.99 is behind only Malcolm Marshall (20.94) and Joel Garner (20.97) of those with 200 Test wickets. He rarely did bad balls, never mind bad days. Astonishingly, in an eight-year period from 1991-99 he spent only seven months outside the top two of the ICC Test bowling rankings – and this in a golden age of fast and slow bowling.

The dramatic twist was a brutal blow to Australia and particularly Border. He retired in 1994, a year before Taylor’s side finally dethroned West Indies with a 2-1 win in the Caribbean. Steve Waugh stood up to Ambrose on a vile pitch in Trinidad and then made 200 in the series decider at Jamaica. “It was fantastic to finally beat them in a series during my career,” says Boon, who then answers the next question before it has even been asked. “The only disappointment I had with that was that Allan Border wasn’t able to achieve that during his time, having fought for so long. That was a little sad and disappointing that he couldn’t be playing, but the godsend was that he was there as a commentator and he could join in those celebrations.”

Border and the former coach Bob Simpson, who between them picked Australia off the floor in the mid-1990s, were in the dressing-room after the series victory. It belonged to them too. “AB was probably the last to leave the celebration,” says Langer. “I was in awe of him, but I gave him a few hugs that night. I didn’t face one ball in the Test series but it’s my favourite ever tour.”

Ambrose says the 1992-93 series was easily the best victory of his career, because “it was a team half full of rookies and no one gave us a chance”. At the end of the match he received the keys to a four-wheel drive as part of a clean sweep of honours: Man of the Match, Man of the Series, International Cricketer of the Year. The entire the squad celebrated with a joyous lap of the ground in Ambrose’s new vehicle.

The Aussies were irritated by a few of the West Indies players wearing T-shirts that said “Form is temporary, class is permanent,” presumably in reference to Sobers’ comments after Adelaide. Those T-shirts weren’t quite right. With Ambrose, even form was permanent.