Ambrose still bowling after all these years

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

MOST 51-year-olds would get no respect from test batsmen if they dared to turn their arm over in the nets, but Curtly Ambrose is no ordinary 51-year-old.

So when the former West Indies fast bowler breezed in off 10 paces in the Centurion nets on Monday, he got nothing but respect from the batsmen who faced him.

In fact, he was as on the mark as he had been on the famous fifth morning of SA’s inaugural test in the Caribbean in April, 1992.

SA had gone into that day’s play with eight wickets in hand to get 79 more runs to win the first test they had played in 22 years.

But Courtney Walsh took 4/8 in 11 inspired overs and Ambrose added four wickets to his match haul of 8/81 to bowl the Windies to an epic triumph.

On Monday, Ambrose looked not a mite different from the feared bowler he was when he played his last test 14 years ago. He still looms all of his 2.01 metres tall and he remains the epitome of lean and mean.

But these days, he said, he had a harder job as West Indies’ bowling consultant compared to when he was scaring wits and wickets - 405 of them in test cricket - out of the game’s finest batsmen.

“As a bowler I believed I could work magic with the ball in my hand,” Ambrose said. “Sometime, as a coach, it gets frustrating if the players are not doing what you asked them to do.”

What will Ambrose ask his charges to do in the first test against SA, which starts in Centurion on Wednesday?

“We’re not going to bowl any lengths for them to drive.”

And did he think that the visitors should opt for an all-pace attack at usually lively Centurion, considering they did just that when they achieved their only win in a dozen tests in SA - at St George’s Park in December, 2007?

“It doesn’t mean because we won with four fast bowlers before we will again - I’m a bit of a realist,” Ambrose said.

“It’s a different era and we have to work with what we have.”

Ambrose has bowlers of the respectable calibre of Jerome Taylor, Kemar Roach, and lesser known others like Shannon Gabriel, Jason Holder and Sheldon Cottrell to work with.

None of them is the next Ambrose. Not while he is still bowling in the nets after all these years.