'Whispering Death' they called him, the Jamaican fast bowler with the enormous run who was so light on his feet umpires never heard him approach. He ran so far that at his peak he could not play on some county grounds because by the time he had marked out his approach he was outside the boundary. There have been just a handful of fast bowlers in cricket history who were so fast many batsmen could not react and Michael Holding was one of them. When he first went to Australia in 1975-76, batsmen already suffering from jarred fingers were appalled to find he achieved this speed despite landing a long way behind the bowling crease. He was the one West Indies fast bowler who rarely bowled a no-ball. No doubt his greatest feat was his destruction of England in a high scoring match on a parched Oval in 1976, when he took 8-92 and 6-57 in a heatwave and just kept on bowling. The other piece of cricket history involving Holding concerns his over to Geoffrey Boycott at Bridgetown in 1981, which many feel was the fastest over ever bowled anywhere at anytime. Boycott battled through it, barely seeing the ball, before he was bowled by the last delivery. Holding won a medal in the 1979 World Cup final and was last man out in the 1983 final. In addition to Jamaica he played for Lancashire, Derbyshire, Tasmania and Canterbury. In his later years he developed into a fine bowler of seam and swing at fast-medium pace. (Bob Harragan)