According to Guinness World Records, the record for ducks in Test match cricket is 43 and is held by one of the greatest, if not the greatest, tail-enders of all time, Courtney Walsh. Born in Kingston, Jamaica on October 30. 1962, Walsh was, of course, best known as an aggressive fast bowler who, alongside Curtley Ambrose, formed a formidable new-ball partnership throughout the nineties. Indeed, on March 19, 2001, Walsh became the first bowler in history to take 500 Test wickets and by the time of his retirement from international cricket, at the end of the fifth and final Test of the South Africa Tour of West Indies at Sabina Park, Kingston on April 23, 2001, had increased his career tally to a then-record 519 Test wickets.
However, while Walsh was world class with the ball, he was the epitome of an out-and-out specialist bowler, whose comical antics with the bat became the stuff of legend. ‘Cuddy’, as he was known to his friends and family, made his Test debut in the first Test of the West Indies tour of Australia at the Western Australia Cricket Association (WACA) in Perth on November 10, 1984. He scored 9 not out in a West Indies first innings total of 416 – the first of 61 occasions on which he would be left at the crease at the end of a Test match innings – and did not need to bat again as the tourists won by an inning and 112 runs.
All told, Walsh played 132 Test matches for West Indies and, in 185 innings, scored 936 runs at an average of 7.54. Highlights of his less-than-stellar career as a Test match batsman included a high score of 30, achieved during a partnership of 57 with Ambrose for the ninth wicket in the first innings of the third Test of the West Indies tour of Australia at Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in December, 1988. Lowlights, though, included a ‘pair’, when captain, in the second Test of the West Indies tour of Pakistan at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium in 1997.