Hampshire's Greatest Overseas Pace Bowlers

Following the recent announcement of the signing of Pakistan seamer Mohammad Abbas for the first two months of the 2021 season, Hampshire Cricket's historian Dave Allen looks back at the great overseas pace bowlers who have represented Hampshire.

It is about a 120 years since our first ‘real’ overseas bowler CB (‘Buck’) Llewellyn arrived at Hampshire. He played Test cricket for South Africa, was a member of our Championship side from 1901-1910, and in 196 first-class matches for the county scored 15 centuries, almost 9,000 runs, and took 711 wickets. But he was not really a quick bowler – at most medium-pace with spin and cut, typical of those days, and between the wars another South African, Len Creese was a similar bowler who in 278 county matches took 401 wickets.

After the war, our first overseas players were all predominantly batsmen, Roy Marshall, Danny Livingstone and Gordon Greenidge from the Caribbean and Barry Richards from South Africa. In 1973 our left-arm spinner David O’Sullivan from New Zealand enjoyed a wonderful August as we clinched the Championship title but then lost his overseas contract to a rather useful and genuinely fast bowler Andy Roberts from Antigua.

In 1974 when all the bad luck in the world deprived Hampshire of a second consecutive title over the final weekend, he was simply astonishing – and frightening. He took 119 first-class wickets, topping the national averages at 13.92, when no one else in the country got to 95 wickets.

In 1975 he was absent for a time with the West Indies at the first World Cup, although he contributed to our first one-day trophy, the John Player Sunday League, then in 1976 he was on a full Test tour. In 1977 there were just 40 first-class wickets and when he left during the 1978 season his Hampshire record was 244 wickets in 58 matches with the lowest average, 16.70, of any regular bowler in our history.

His replacement Malcolm Marshall was hardly known outside Barbados when he joined Hampshire for the 1979 season, having only made his Test debut just before Christmas 1978, in a West Indies side lacking a number of their leading players who had been playing in Kerry Packer’s World Series in Australia.

By the time Malcolm retired from county cricket after the 1993 season he had taken 826 first-class wickets for Hampshire at 18.64 – adding almost 6,000 runs at over 25 each innings, plus 239 limited-overs wickets. He is in the eyes of many players and supporters the finest of all Hampshire’s overseas players and a man able to commit to a career of such length is unimaginable today.

He returned as coach before being diagnosed with the terrible illness that ended his life at the age of 41. It is perhaps as good a measure as any of the contribution of Marshall and Gordon Greenidge that through the 1980s, when they toured with the West Indies, Hampshire finished last (1980); 15^th (1984), and 15^th again in 1988. In between those seasons, they were never lower than seventh, with third place in 1982 & 1983 and runners-up in 1985.

In Marshall’s touring absences we signed other pace bowlers, West Indian Elvis Reifer in 1984, South African Steve Jefferies in 1988 and Aqib Javed from Pakistan in 1991 – the last two both enjoying most success in sides that won Lord’s cup finals, as Marshall did himself in 1992. 

After Marshall’s retirement, there was a brief period when we signed a number of different overseas players including pace bowlers Winston Benjamin (West Indies 1994 & 1996); Heath Streak (Zimbabwe 1995) and Nixon McLean (West Indies 1998/9) and batsmen Matthew Hayden (Australia 1997) and Neil Johnson (2001/2).

Then came a succession of Australians including Shane Warne, Simon Katich, Michael Clarke, Shane Watson and Dominic Thorneley, with brief visits from pacemen Wasim Akram (Pakistan) and Chaminda Vaas (Sri Lanka) in 2003.

Warne finished after the 2007 season and again there were a number of shorter-term overseas bowlers including pacemen, New Zealander Shane Bond and Stuart Clark from Australia – Clark sharing a season with West Indian ‘quick’ Daren Powell. Between 2008-2014 wrist spinner Imran Tahir enjoyed some success with the county taking 130 wickets at 25.46.

These days many overseas players seem to visit for fewer months than Greenidge or the two Marshalls spent years – it is the nature of contemporary cricket – but in recent years we have been lucky to enjoy a very fine pair of contrasting opening bowlers.

Fidel Edwards seemed to have arrived in his twilight years in 2015, but apart from a pre-match injury that wrecked his 2016 season (replaced briefly by Tino Best) Fidel performed consistently, often at top pace – and he was a character, a performer for supporters to enjoy. When the 2019 season ended he had 185 first-class wickets for Hampshire at 25.35 and would surely have reached his double century but for the pandemic which terminated his county career.

The last time Hampshire fans saw him bowling at home was the penultimate game of the 2019 season in that extraordinary match against Somerset, when even Fidel’s pace was overshadowed by the incredible performance of South African Kyle Abbott. He ended that match with 17 wickets for just 86 runs, the best-ever match figures by any Hampshire bowler in our history. Kyle first played for us in 2014, approaching his 27^th birthday and with a brief break in 2016 has now played in 52 first-class matches taking 2019 wickets at 19.03.

It places him alongside Roberts, Marshall and Derek Shackleton as the four men whose Hampshire career average is below 20 runs per wicket and he is the only one to have taken all those on covered pitches and generally not on outgrounds.