CROFT, Colin Everton Hunte
D.O.B: March 15, 1953 (Unity, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara)
Teams:   Demerara, Guyana, West Indies
Colin Croft was a tall, powerfully built, hostile fast bowler who played 27 Test matches and 19 One-Day Internationals for the West Indies between 1977 and 1982.
He played at a time when the regional team was re-establishing itself as the world champions and there was a battery of high quality fast bowlers to choose from.
However, he had an inauspicious start to his first class career when he represented Guyana against Jamaica at Sabina Park in the 1972 Shell Shield Tournament.
In the only Jamaican innings of 467 for seven wickets declared, Croft sent down 15 overs for 75 runs without taking a wicket as Lawrence Rowe and Maurice Foster struck big hundreds.
Croft did not return to the national side until 1976 when he was included for a solitary match. Even then, the game was severely interrupted by rain and he did not get to bowl a single delivery.
The following year Croft bowled with genuine pace and aggression in the regional four-day competition and his success gained him a place in the West Indies President’s XI team that was pitted against the visiting Pakistanis in Saint Lucia.
His match returns of 10 wickets for 109 runs catapulted him into the team for the first Test in Barbados along with the Barbadian Joel Garner who also had performed excellently in the President’s XI game.
It is instructive to note that while the pacemen proved that they were ready for Test match cricket they only got into the side because of injuries to Michael Holding and Wayne Daniel, both of whom had distinguished themselves on the England tour in mid 1976.
In his debut Test he took three for 85 and four for 47 but West Indies, set 306 for victory, found themselves 237 for nine and staring down the barrel of defeat.
It was Croft in partnership with Andy Roberts who prevented the loss and preserved West Indies record of not losing a Test in Barbados since 1935.
At the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad, in only his second Test, Croft destroyed the strong Pakistani batting with sustained pace and huge leg-cutters to record figures of eight for 29 in the first innings which is still the best bowling figures by a West Indian fast bowler.
The fast bowler ended the series with 33 scalps equalling the West Indian record set by the late left-arm orthodox spinner Alf Valentine against England in 1950. 
In 1978 he played in the first two Tests against the visiting Australians but then, like most of the senior players, withdrew his services to join Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket when talks with the West Indies Cricket Board stalled.
After the impasse, he returned to help West Indies win the 1979 World Cup Tournament in England and the 1979-80 Test series in Australia when West Indies won there for the first time.
In this particular series the fearsome four of Roberts, Holding, Croft and Garner played together in a Test for the first time and Croft was the leading wicket-taker with 16 victims.
An aggressive character, Croft barged into New Zealander umpire Fred Goodall as he charged in to bowl at one point during the controversial 1979-80 series in New Zealand. Together with the West Indies board and the captain Clive Lloyd, he later apologised for his actions.
The lanky fast bowler toured England and Pakistan in 1980 and had yet another fruitful season when the English paid a return visit to the Caribbean in 1981. In this five-Test series he secured 24 wickets at just 18.95 apiece as West Indies won the series 2-nil.
In Saint Vincent in 1981 he bowled West Indies to a truly astonishing two-run victory in a One-Day International with figures of six wickets for 15 runs off nine overs.
Croft endured a lean series when he returned to Australia in 1982 capturing only seven wickets in three Tests at the expensive rate of 51.57 runs each.
His international career came to an abrupt end when he went on a rebel tour to then apartheid South Africa in 1983.
Croft is a well-respected cricket analyst.
RECORD 
TESTS: 27 (1977-1982) WKTS: 125                     AVG: 23.30 BB: 8/29 v Pakistan, Queen’s Park Oval, 1977
ODIs: 19 WKTS: 23 AVG: 25.86
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