In cricket, there are fearsome fast bowlers and skillful exponents of bowling at speeds upwards of 90 miles per hour. Who was possibly one of the nastiest and hostile pace bowlers in cricket? Who made batsmen fear for their lives and well being? Over the decades of Test cricket, there have been several pace men of that ilk.
Balfour Patrick Patterson - better known as Patrick Patterson, for obvious reasons - was surely in the class of nasty quick bowlers. Batsmen who faced him had to use their skill and technique to defend their wicket. Patrick Patterson displayed the willingness and ability necessary to be a truly "nasty" fast bowler.
At Melbourne in 1989, Steve Waugh - who would later become the Australian cricket captain - decided to bounce Patterson on a lively Melbourne pitch. Patterson was a genuine tail-ender, so Waugh thought he should pepper him with a short ball aimed at his head. At the close of play, Patterson barged into the Australian dressing room and threatened to kill all of the Australian batsmen on the field of play the following day.
Former England captain and world-class batsmen, Graham Gooch, claimed that the only time that he feared for his well-being was when he faced deliveries from Patterson. This Jamaican fast bowler played cricket between 1982 and 1992. He made his Test debut against England at his hometown, Sabina Park, in 1986. In his debut Test match, Patterson took 7 wickets for 73 runs in the match.
As a strike bowler for the regional team, Patterson played 28 Test matches. He scalped (almost literally) 93 Test wickets at an average of 30.90. In the shorter ODI version of the game, Patterson's hostile bowling reaped 90 wickets from 59 matches. His First-class career was successful as well. Patrick Patterson took 493 wickets from 161 First-class matches. His strike rates were very impressive as well. In Test matches, he took a wicket every 52 deliveries. In one-day internationals,Patterson possessed a productive bowling strike rate of 33.8.
Understandably, Patterson's quickness and hostility was noticed beyond the West Indies. The tall, muscular fast bowler enjoyed stints with Lancashire in England and Tasmania in Australia. Although his batting was nothing to speak of, Patterson's strength surely was bowling; bowling as quickly as possible. Batsmen who feared for their lives will surely remember the inelegant preamble that brought deliveries in excess of 95 miles an hour bearing down on their bodies.
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