Sachin was the best I bowled against: Ian Bishop

Let's start with when you were a young kid. What is that made you want to become a fast bowler?

To be honest, I had no intention of wanting to become a fast bowler. I started playing cricket in my first and second year of my secondary school, and I basically was an opening batsman. I was the captain of the school's U-14 team as well. We had a very important game against Fatima College for which Brian Lara was playing. One of my opening bowlers couldn't make it to the game, we knew from the week before that he couldn't play. So, I decided that I would fill in for him. I practiced bowling off-spin, it didn't turn. I tried another ball, it didn't turn. I gradually started pushing my run up back and back and further back until I started bowling medium pace. This is how I totally by accident became a fast bowler. It was as a batsman that I really started off at school.

I also read that when you were first selected for West Indies, as a young fast bowling tear-away, you weren't too much into intimidating the batsmen. But then, soon enough, we saw the kind of treatment that was dealt to Robin Smith in Antigua in 1990. So, how was the transformation in you as a fast bowler, how did the mentality come about?




Bowlers of our generation, we allowed the ball to do the talking. It is a different time now, guys say a lot now. Coming through, I suppose, being a tender-hearted person, I thought fast bowling was just about getting wickets. I wasn't trying to hit anyone, and that was not the case. But then, I got into higher levels of cricket and you realize that shorter balls could be used as a weapon, even if you want to call it intimidation.

It was just a gradual process of getting into first class cricket, which was very difficult, and I had to find other avenues and methods of trying to create or mess up a batsman's footwork and short ball is one of those thing that will cause indecisiveness. It wasn't the case that any of us went out there to maim or hit someone. It is a part of the game for the batsmen.

What are the most important mental attributes that a fast bowler needs to have compared to other types of bowlers- An out-and-out fast bowler as opposed to a swing bowler or a spinner?

That is a good question. There are principles that run across the board. You have to be mentally tough, because fast bowling is very demanding work, particularly in modern Caribbean times when the pitches aren't as fast as they used to be, and you have to tour the sub-continent, and New Zealand. When you get to England and Australia, you enjoy your work a little bit more.

But, by and large, you have to be mentally tough. You have to like hard work. You have to have a lot of self-belief as well. I don't know of any successful fast bowler who doesn't believe in himself completely, bordering on arrogance. It is about intimidation as well.

You have to make the batsman know that as a fast bowler, not a medium pacer not a swing bowler, there is a physical hurt coming your way if you are not up to the mark technically. All of these things - the mental toughness, the confidence, and the fact that you will be leading the attack as an intimidator are part and parcel of a fast bowler.

What are your thoughts on the modern coaching philosophy, where everything is controlled? The amount of bowling in the nets and pre-game preparation. How was it in your times, and how does it compare to the modern coaching philosophies?

Times change, and I am not a big critic of the scientific ways of doing things. I do believe that a balance needs to be struck. When we were coming through, I just spoke to a colleague who played with me who played in the 60s and 70s as a wicket keeper.

When he was batting in the nets as a wicket keeper, he never really got a lot of knocks on the tour. By the time the opening batsmen, numbers 3, 4, 5 and 6 were out, everyone was too tired to bowl to him, and he didn't get much batting practice.

When we were coming through, we had to work very hard before the match, and that was tiring. Because we didn't have many practice bowlers mostly, and we had to do most of these things ourselves. I thought that was counter-productive.

I like it now, where they would go hard 2 or 3 days before the match. The day before the match, they will ease off. What I don't agree with what is happening now, is that you have to bowl a fair amount of deliveries in the nets to groove your action, to understand your body and rhythm without overdoing it.

It is about finding that balance between bowling enough and not overdoing it. I sympathize with the modern coaching with so much cricket being played, that in order to preserve the pace of your fast bowler throughout the career you have to limit.

You can't limit it in matches as much as you want to, so you have to get back to the practice sessions. It is a little bit of a conflict, but I do like my quicks to bowl enough deliveries at practice, because that is where you will get your body going in shape for the match.

I want to touch upon West Indies', especially Trinidad's, fast bowlers. First, a couple of listeners wanted to know - there are Kemar Roach, Rampaul, Shannon Gabriel, Tino Best coming through. But, we haven't seen someone that is cut above the rest.

Perhaps Kemar Roach will end up as one of those. We don't know. If you can put a finger on it- there is talent, but there is no outstanding talent coming through from West Indies.

Roach is a shining light at the moment. You can never stamp greatness on any 22 or a 23 year old, and you can judge from my career that it will be the right thing to not do so.

You identify talent- Roach and a couple of other guys have that. It really is, Subash, about how they will develop over the course of the next 4 or 5 years. That will determine whether they will go on to become great bowlers.

Roach has an abundance of talent. Rampaul, I don't think has the prerequisites to be a great bowler. He has the head and talent to be a very good bowler but you were talking great.

It comes down to who has the package, which of these guys coming through moves the ball off the seam and in the air because none of them are very tall, and which of them can do it at pace. And none of these guys now apart from Roach, who comes from Barbados, we can pin point and say "they can do this, at pace".

These guys don't roll off the conveyor belt, we have to keep searching. We don't have enough guys bowling quick. That's the problem in the Caribbean. The pitches are so slow that I think they are discouraging guys from bowling quickly for any sustained period of time.

Until we get the pitches back to the way they should be, until we start encouraging potential fast bowlers - I think the West Indies board are trying to do that in the u-19 level by trying to stipulate that each team must play a couple, then we will continue the struggle.

But, there are a couple of guys. Roach, and maybe Gabriel will have to learn some things now. He is tall, has pace, we will have to see how he develops, and also a good brain.

You had said Sir Viv was one of the hardest batsmen to bowl to, and from the current lot of the batsmen, Tendulkar was the hardest to bowl to. What in your opinion, was it that made those two batsmen so difficult to bowl to?

Sir Vivian? I only played against Vivian maybe two or three times in my career- twice in county cricket when I was playing for Derbyshire, and once in the West Indies.

I didn't play against him a lot but just one or two occasions when I was playing him in the back end of his career in county cricket he struck the ball off me so fearlessly and powerfully that it confirmed to me everything that I saw him doing from close quarters while I played with him for the WI.

It is OK to watch him leave our dressing room and takes a liking to Graham Dilley or Paul Jarvis or Merv Hughes or someone like that. But having run into him at the back end of his career and feeling the weight of his bat for a very short period confirmed all of that to me.

I did not play against Lara at all. People always ask me how I can say Tendulkar is great - it means that he is better than Lara. The point is that I have never bowled to Lara. I am talking about guys I've played against.

We understand that you didn't get to bowl at Lara. The question was about the players you had bowled to...

I was asked that question before, and I got the feedback from people who asked "How can you say that Tendulkar is the hardest batsman you have bowled against? Are you saying that he is better than Lara?" And they didn't understand that the question posed to me was who is the best I have bowled against. I have never played against Brian Lara outside of school cricket.

Sachin, to me, was the best I have bowled against simply because he did not allow me as a bowler to settle down over a sequence of deliveries against him. From the moment I was marginally off line, he would look to capitalize and pounce on it and a lot of the times, he will put it away for 4.

In fact, he was so good that sometimes, I felt that I had bowled some good deliveries to him, and he would still be able to pick them over the infield or maybe for a few runs. He was, in his prime, the most difficult batsman to bowl to in my view - others may not agree, but for my style [of bowling] that he never allowed me to settle.