| Player | Matches | Inns | Wickets | BBI | Avg | 5W/10W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Courtney Walsh | 132 | 242 | 519 | 7/37 | 24.44 | 22/3 |
| Curtly Ambrose | 98 | 179 | 405 | 8/45 | 20.99 | 22/3 |
| Malcolm Marshall | 81 | 151 | 376 | 7/22 | 20.94 | 22/4 |
| Lance Gibbs | 79 | 148 | 309 | 8/38 | 29.09 | 18/2 |
| Kemar Roach | 85 | 154 | 284 | 6/48 | 27.21 | 11/1 |
| Joel Garner | 58 | 111 | 259 | 6/56 | 20.97 | 7/0 |
| Michael Holding | 60 | 113 | 249 | 8/92 | 23.68 | 13/2 |
| Garry Sobers | 93 | 159 | 235 | 6/73 | 34.03 | 6/0 |
| Andy Roberts | 47 | 90 | 202 | 7/54 | 25.61 | 11/2 |
| Wes Hall | 48 | 92 | 192 | 7/69 | 26.38 | 9/1 |
Key Insights
Courtney Walsh has taken the most wickets for the West Indies in Test cricket. The tearaway pacer picked up 519 wickets in 242 innings.
What’s fascinating is Walsh was the first man to pocket 500 wickets in the longer format. He needed 129 Tests to reach the mark. Find out how many others have crossed the milestone number after him here.
Walsh, Malcolm Marshall, and Curtly Ambrose have taken 22 five-wicket hauls each, the joint-most for the West Indies in Tests. Find overall leaders here.
Marshall, though, tops both with 4 ten-wicket hauls. Walsh and Ambrose picked up 3 ten-fors each. However, these numbers don’t rank in the overall top-10 list.
Marshall also has the best bowling average and strike rate among the Caribbean bowlers with a minimum of 100 Test wickets. He took 376 scalps in 151 innings at an average of 20.94 and a strike rate of 46.7.
254 of Marshall’s 376 scalps came in 43 Test wins, the most for the West Indies. This tells you how big of an impact he had in the 1980s, the golden period of Caribbean cricket.
Marshall is the fastest West Indian bowler to take 200 (42 matches), 250 (53), 300 (61), and 350 (75) wickets in Test cricket.
Alf Valentine is the fastest to 50 Test wickets (eight matches), while he and Andy Roberts share the top spot for 100 wickets. Both reached the mark in 19 matches. Roberts is the quickest to 150 scalps, having taken 33 Test matches.
Find the overall list of global fastest bowlers to reach every 100x Test wickets here.
Joel Garner (20.97) and Ambrose (20.99) have sub-21 averages, while Colin Croft is the other bowler with a strike rate below 50 for the West Indies.
Jack Noreiga has delivered the best bowling figures in a Test innings for the West Indies. He picked up nine wickets for 95 runs against India in the second innings of the 1971 Port of Spain Test. Noriega’s 9 for 95 is also the third-best bowling figure in a losing cause in all Tests. Check where this stands in the overall top ten bowling figures in Test cricket and the list against India.
Speaking of the best match figures, Michael Holding sits atop. He took 8 for 92 and 6 for 57 to have a combined match figure of 14 for 149 against England in the 1976 Oval Test.
Read: Why is Cricket in the West Indies on the Decline? – From Stalwarts to Minnows!
