Fresh from his six-wicket blitz which demolished Bangladesh in the first Test against the West Indies which ended on Tuesday, new fast bowling find Jermaine Lawson can’t wait to play in the 2003 World Cup and have a crack at the mighty Australians as he tells Tony Cozier.
JERMAINE LAWSON widely acknowledges a couple of things about his sensational 15-ball burst of six wickets for no run that finished off Bangladesh in the first Test here Tuesday.
One is that it gave him a headstart in his ambitious, if not far-fetched, stated quest to overhaul the record 519 Test wickets of one his heroes and mentors, fellow Jamaican Courtney Walsh.
It was not until his 33rd Test, when he was 27, that Walsh had his first return of six wickets in an innings although he never had the benefit of bowling to opposition as inexperienced and weak as Bangladesh.
Lawson is 20 and claimed his six wicket haul in his third Test.
His second realisation is that his goal is a very long way off and that early success against a team hardly even first-class level doesn’t mean he has arrived. Quite the opposite.
“Now that I’ve taken six, I’ve got to lift my game every time I play,” he says. “I want to carry on from here so that means I can’t relax or anything. I’ve got to keep my composure, keep my focus.”
Lawson states that he has always concentrated on his fitness. That much is evident in his sculptured, six feet, two inches physique.
“I’d work out in the gym at least three times a week when I’m back home, along with the practice,” he reveals. “I’ve got to be fit so that I can do well whenever I take the field.”
“You can’t go out there and bowl for two days if you’re not fit and certainly not if you want to be at the top level at all times,” he adds.
His potential, first spotted when he was at Waterford High School in the southern parish of St. Catherine, carried him into the Jamaica under-19 team from where he graduated to the West Indies team to the Youth World Cup in Sri Lanka in 1999.
There was the advantage that Walsh and Michael Holding, two of the finest fast bowlers the game has known, were close by to offer encouragement and advice.
Others like Jamaican coach Robert Haynes and under-19 manager Linden Wright have also been solid supporters.
Lawson was the leading wicket-taker in the regional youth tournament in Barbados in 1999 and attracted immediate attention at the World Cup in Sri Lanka later that year with a hat-trick against Zimbabwe.
His speed, from a long, bounding run and loose-limbed delivery, marked him out as a definite prospect for a West Indies team needing to replenish the supply of fast bowlers that had worryingly dried up.
He got his first senior call to the triangular series of one-day internationals in Sri Lanka last year.
He had just a couple of matches but took the only two Sri Lankan wickets to fall in the second in Kandy, among them Sanath Jayasuriya who was too late on a bouncer and lobbed a catch to mid-on. It was his 140 kph (90 mph) speed that secured his selection for the tour of India, traditionally not the most encouraging environment for fast bowlers, and Bangladesh.
Chosen for the last two Tests in India, he managed only four expensive wickets (average 51.5). But they included Sachin Tendulkar twice and Rahul Dravid once and he got approving nods from the retired Test cricketers who now sit in judgement of their successors in the commentary box and in the press.
Such assessments were confirmed with his opening burst that accounted for Virender Sewag, VVS Laxman, Dinesh Mongia and Dravid and virtually guaranteed a series-clinching victory in the decisive last one-day international after the batsmen had amassed 315 for six.
The yorker that flattened the left-handed Mongia’s off-stump and almost knocked him off his feet was a television image that excited every watching West Indian.
“Getting those four wickets in the final helped my confidence, no doubt,” he says. “It made me work even harder on my game and I came to Bangladesh focused on doing well.”
“Doing well” is an understatement for his performance at the Bangabandhu Stadium that has placed him in the pages of Wisden.
No other bowler has taken six wickets in a Test innings as cheaply as his three runs. Arthur Gilligan’s six for seven against South Africa in Birmingham in 1924 had been the previous mark.
It was comparable, if only in statistical terms, with some of the bursts of the great Curtly Ambrose his seven for one against Australia at Perth in 1993, his match-winning five for eight (final figures eight for 45) against England in Bridgetown in 1990, his six wickets as England tumbled towards their 46 all out in Port-of-Spain in 1994.
Ambrose’s various bags included David Boon, Damien Martyn, Mark Waugh, Nasser Hussain, Mike Atherton, Alec Stewart, Graeme Thorpe and Robin Smith. Aminul Islam, Khaled Mashud, Alok Kapali and the other Bangladeshis don’t have quite the same ring about them.
But Lawson already had big names in his book Jayasuirya, Tendulkar, Dravid.
The next challenges are imminent the World Cup in South Africa in February and March, immediately followed by the series against the daunting Australians in the Caribbean in April and May.
“The World Cup is the biggest tournament in the game and the Australians the strongest team at present,” he says. “That’s the kind of opportunity any cricketer looks forward to. I’m no different. I can’t wait.”