It is strange that a bowler brought up in Perth, the home of the fastest and bounciest wicket in the world, should have become the bowler who best exploited English wickets with swing and seam, yet that is what Terry Alderman did. What is more, he managed it in two different styles. In 1981 he was a sharpish seam bowler; in 1989 he had reinvented himself as a dealer in slowish-medium swingers which darted in and out like striking snakes. In both styles he ran rings round England batsmen. His figures speak for themselves: 42 wickets in 6 Tests in 1981, average 21.22 and 41 more in 1989, average 17.36. One shudders to think how many he would have taken in 1985 if he had not signed to go to South Africa with the rebel Australian side and been unceremoniously removed from the team after originally being chosen. He made the wrong decision in cricketing terms, for he only made the side in one of the unofficial Tests in blockaded apartheid South Africa, ending with the unprepossessing figures of 1-68 and 4-116 at The Wanderers in Johannesburg. He was never as effective overseas as in England, where he played for Kent and Gloucestershire. Through injury and the South African ban he never played in a World Cup. Alderman was a late starter in Test cricket, playing for Western Australia against England as early as 1975. Selectors must have thought he was just another of those Perth medium pacers who bowled into the offshore gale known as the Fremantle Doctor while real bowlers powered in from the other end. He had the last laugh, as there is little doubt that he was the most effective Australian bowler ever to tour the U.K. (Bob Harragan)