Question & Answer with Ian Bishop

Tall, aggressive and with searing pace, Bishop was a sight to behold when in full flow and bowled a near perfect out-swinger.

Since retiring from cricket in 1998, Bishop has forged a successful career as a television commentator and is a familiar face on television screens around the world.

In an exclusive interview with PakPassion.net, Bishop speaks about his own career, talks about bowling with his cricketing heroes such as Malcolm Marshall and Courtney Walsh, provides his opinions on the Pakistani pace duo of Junaid Khan and Mohammad Irfan, suggests what Umar Akmal needs to do to establish himself as an international cricketer and also speaks about the importance of ensuring an even contest between bat and ball in one-day cricket.

Excerpts from an interview:

PakPassion.net (PP): How would you rate your own career which was of course curtailed by injuries?

Ian Bishop (IB): Now is a good time to look back at my career and I would say that yes I am disappointed that I did not play more Test cricket which was of course due to a couple of back injuries. But outside of that I’m happy to have just played cricket for the West Indies.

As a youngster growing up there and getting out on the field and playing 40 or so Test matches was a blessing. I have no regrets, yes I could have done more and played more matches but I don’t live in regret.

I was just happy to be on the same field as the likes of Courtney Walsh, Curtly Ambrose and Malcolm Marshall, all of whom were of great assistance to me. I feel I was blessed to have played in the era that I did with those legends of fast bowling.

PP: You’ve mentioned some great names in the previous answer, were they your cricketing heroes?

IB: I came through high school between 1979 and 1983/84 when the West Indies started their rise and their period of dominance in the early 1980s.

That team under Clive Lloyd was a team that captured my imagination and my interest started with the batting side of Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge who were players that I really admired, as when I started playing cricket in my first couple of years of secondary school I was a batsman.

However I never really played too many shots and people nicknamed me Geoffrey Boycott as I didn’t score that quickly and I really did not take up bowling until mid way through secondary school where I started to have a great deal of admiration for, and started to copy, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Colin Croft and Malcolm Marshall.

I just tried to emulate aspects of their bowling and tried to incorporate them into my style of bowling.

PP: Your back injuries are well documented, but in your own words do you think it was down to your bowling action or just bad luck?

IB: The medics and experts of the day pointed to a mixed bowling action and that compounded with the fact that I was playing a fair amount of cricket at that time.

I was playing county cricket and international cricket as well and maybe I was overdoing it as I was only in my early 20s back then. We are seeing a fair amount of those injury problems now particularly with the Australian fast bowlers.

Looking at the issue in retrospect, I made some alterations to my bowling action based on medical and technical advice thereafter where I tried to get my feet and upper body aligned as I was informed that they weren’t aligned when I was bowling. All that contributed to the problems that I had. However I’d like to think that fast bowlers these days are better informed about such things, even though the volume of cricket is still having an impact on injuries to quick bowlers.

PP: You mention the modern day Australian fast bowlers who seem to be having a terrible time with injuries. Based on your own experience, do you have any advice for them?

IB: Having gone through my career with a couple of stress fractures, one in 1990/91 and then a recurrence of it in 1993, I thought there would be enough examples like mine for scientists and medics to be able to secure or guide up and coming fast bowlers against that type of recurrence.

However, these types of injuries are still occurring and maybe as some have said, the body needs to be a little hardened before young bowlers play a huge volume of cricket.

It’s difficult to point a finger at why this is happening but people need to be mindful of the amount of cricket some fast bowlers are being asked to play at such a young age.

PP: What would you say was the most memorable bowling spell in your career?

IB: Two spells come to mind. The effort in the final Test in 1990 at Lahore against Pakistan where Ambrose and I took five wickets each was memorable because of the conditions.

We knew it was going to be difficult to take wickets unless we were really skilled on that tour of Pakistan.

Another spell that was memorable was my 6 for 40 against Australia at Perth in 1993.

I always liked bowling at Perth as did any fast bowler of my generation because of the bounce and the pace on that pitch at that time and to follow up on Ambrose’s six-wicket haul in the first innings was very satisfying.