It is a grainy black and white memory of a Test match, which came to its spell-binding conclusion on my eighth birthday. I think they even delayed the six o'clock news on the BBC to show the last throes of the Lord's Test of 1963.

We've all seen the pictures of Colin Cowdrey making his way to the wicket with disarming cheerfulness, his left arm broken and in plaster after "losing" a delivery from Wes Hall the previous day. At least he had the comfort of heading to the non-striker's end.

England were nine wickets down and six runs short of victory. They say that Cowdrey had been practising batting left-handed – and indeed one-handed – in the dressing room, but we were spared witnessing whether that practise was of any help. David Allen, the phlegmatic Gloucestershire off-spinner, calmly defended the last two deliveries from Hall before everyone shook hands.

Even a seven-year-old could appreciate what had gone before. There was the glorious 70 of Ted Dexter at his most lordly in the first innings. His majestic onslaught on the West Indies fast bowlers on the second afternoon was a were-you-there? moment.

There was Basil Butcher, holding together the West Indies second innings, scoring 133 out of 229. Only Butcher could deal with the might of Freddie Trueman, somewhere near his pomp and in the process of taking 11 wickets in the match. And in England's second innings captain Frank Worrell kept turning to the indefatigable Hall, just as he had done in the famous tied Test in Brisbane three years earlier.

And there was Brian Close during his epic 70 in the second innings walking down the pitch to the startled Hall who "pulled up so abruptly that you half expected puffs of smoke to come up from under the soles of his boots as in cartoon films when brakes are put on". So wrote John Clarke, author of Cricket with a Swing, my first cricket book.

So the match was drawn and England's enterprise had not quite been rewarded. Clarke has the stats: "England bowled their overs more quickly, 19 an hour compared with around 15, and scored 10 runs more per 100 balls than their opponents". More importantly we all wanted to watch this game again. VM

Sir Vivian Richards stadium, 13 February 2009. Fidel Edwards tries to run in to bowl the second over of the Test match, and finds himself running through a quicksand. It is a shambles, an outfield utterly unsuited for anything but a deckchair and beach umbrella.

Several miles up the road though, in the very heart of St John's sits the Antigua Recreation Ground, unwanted now but not unloved, abandoned for the new upstart. They hold football matches there. The scoreboard that twice registered Brian Lara's successful assaults on the highest Test score, and marked the one and only Viv making the fastest of all Test centuries, is rusting away. The dressing rooms are dusty, shabby. The ghosts of the past cry.

I have spent more happy exhilarated hours watching Test cricket in the intimacy of the Rec than any other ground in the world. It throbbed and vibrated with the very essence of Caribbean cricket, from the disco of Chickie Baptiste that rocked the Double Decker stand, to the cross-dressing clown Gravy and his sidekick Mayfield and the persuasive percussion of the Iron Band. Ramshackle it may have been, but it represented the lifeblood of the game in the region.

Then came the World Cup. Chinese money built a swanky new edifice and the down-at-heel Rec became a thing of the past, its soul sucked dry. Until now. The Test was abandoned. Local help mucked in, a pitch was prepared and the Rec spruced up with a lick or two of paint. Fresh new names appeared on the scoreboard and days later a Test match took place.

Gravy was an old man by then and safety prevented the opening of the bouncing upper tier of the Double Decker stand. But Chickie was there and so was a crowd once more. It was as if we were being granted a wish to return to the past. And once again I felt the happiness. MS

Not by any means the outstanding Test or outstanding performance of the summer: that came in July that year at Old Trafford where Malcolm Marshall took for seven for 22 – scurrying in and snaking the ball around with a horrible malevolent intelligence – to dismiss England for 98 in their second innings, back in the days when teams simply weren't dismissed for double figure scores. The final Test at The Oval was a slow-burner by comparison.

England were punchy by that stage, groggily propping themselves up with one-cap wonders. Rob Bailey and Matthew Maynard made their debuts in this match. Tim Curtis played his second Test in a top seven also containing David Capel and Jack Richards. This match stood out because it was the last of the summer on what was the last really invincible tour for the Blackwash-era West indies of the 1980s (three years later they would share the Test summer 2-2). For now though Marshall, Courtney Walsh, Curtley Ambrose and Winston Benjamin were simply too much.

It was special because this was the first Test I went to watch: a team of greats in their home away from home – as it was then – in south London. On a humid, cloudy first day Curtis hooked courageously and was hit on the helmet at least once. Bailey played very well for 43, his highest Test score, in his first innings. And in an almost entirely West Indian stand, full of the kind of trilby-hatted old men you don't really see any more at cricket, I found myself sitting on my own next to David Essex for three days. He was very nice. He gave me some of his sandwiches and we talked quite a lot (I was the same age as his son). It was only at the end of the third day when someone came up and said "You're David Essex" that I realised he was David Essex.

It was a little embarrassing. We both felt awkward now that he knew I knew he was David Essex. I ended up just sort of sloping off without saying goodbye.

Over the course of the match I formed two cast-iron assumptions about Test cricket. First, West Indies were a force of nature, unshakeable well-drilled, swarmingly aggressive in the field, invincibly well supported; and second you pretty much always get to sit next to David Essex or similar. Sadly neither has really stood the test of time. BR

Never having attended an England-West Indies Test in the flesh until this week, with a single trip to the Kensington Oval on a Virgin freebie involving a strange and memorable encounter with Sir Richard Branson in the dressing room after he had done himself some serious damage top-scoring in the fierce heat, nothing has eclipsed the pride felt as a young Lancashire supporter when Graeme Fowler scored a century at Lord's in 1984.

England had already been humiliated in the first Test at Edgbaston, when Fowler was dismissed cheaply in each innings by Joel Garner, and Warwickshire's Andy Lloyd was felled by Malcolm Marshall. Fowler may have had a reputation as a joker, but batting against this West Indies attack clearly required courage, as well as skill.

Chris Broad was called up to open with him at Lord's, and home expectation cannot have been high when Clive Lloyd won the toss and put England in. But perhaps boosted by the absence through injury of Michael Holding, who was replaced by Milton Small – a name that rang only the vaguest of bells when I looked up the scorecard – Fowler and Broad put on 101, before Broad fell caught behind to Marshall for 55. David Gower, Allan Lamb and Mike Gatting all fell cheaply, lbw to Marshall, who ended the innings with six for 85.

But Fowler was still there when we turned on the radio on the drive home from school. Richie Benaud, who had already offered high praise for the Accringtonian's athletic fielding at cover point, confirmed on the TV that the man in the white helmet had flirted regularly outside the off stump, but that any good fortune was well-earned. He'd made 106 out of 243 when he was fifth out, to Eldine Baptiste.

It still wasn't enough for England to square the series, as despite eight wickets for Ian Botham, and a second-innings century for Lamb, this was the match in which Gower's positive declaration allowed Gordon Greenidge to make that famous double century on one leg when we were back at school after the weekend. But Fowler showed his innings was no fluke by adding a half century in the next Test at Headingley, when Marshall took seven for 53. AW

As plans go, it was a poor one. But I was young and broke, my travelling funds exhausted by an unexpected appearance in a Boston traffic court, where I had pleaded guilty to trespassing on a US warship. It never occurred to me that the best way to find somewhere to stay in Kingston wasn't simply to ask the first taxi driver you meet at the airport to take you to the cheapest hotel he knows. "This," I told myself as I slumped down on to a camp bed in my cockroach infested concrete cell, "wasn't quite the impression of life on tour I'd been given to expect."

Sabina Park became a refuge from the rest of the city. Each morning I'd make the long walk down South Camp Road, past a prison and a military base, and each evening I'd scurry back the same way, stopping off to buy some June plum juice and beef patties, before locking myself in my room. Once there I would read Beyond a Boundary by CLR James and chainsmoke Craven 'A' cigarettes, which seemed to be the only brand available from the peddlers on the streets outside. They were foul beyond belief, but at least seemed to keep the mosquitoes away.

For three days, the match ambled along. Devon Smith lashed everything wide through the off-side and made 108. For England, the only really memorable innings came from Nasser Hussain and Mark Butcher, who shared a dour stand of 119 for the third wicket, both revelling in resisting the bombardment they got from Fidel Edwards and Tino Best. The top-scorer was extras with 60.

That, it turned out, was all preamble to the fourth morning, which was one of those all-too-rare moments when Steve Harmison got it right. He took seven wickets for 12 runs in 11.3 overs, his wickets split into two spells of three for one run in 14 balls and four for none in 13. By the end, Michael Vaughan had eight men in the slip cordon and another at short-leg. For a generation who grew used to seeing English batsmen be bullied by West Indies quicks, it was wondrous to watch.

Harmison, a moody bugger with an unkempt action, slipped into a rhythm so tight it could have had a backbeat by the Barrett brothers. He was bowling just short of a length, and making the ball spit up. West Indies' 47 was the lowest total in their history, though still one better than England had been dismissed for in Trinidad 10 years earlier.

He would hardly ever bowl as well again, but his performance started the run of form that led up to their victory in the 2005 Ashes. As for me, I sloped away from the ground wondering what I was going to do next. As it turned out, I flew back to England and got a job writing about cricket for my local paper. AB

Schooldays may be the best days of your life, but they aren't necessarily the most memorable. The days blur into one and so do the nights, an indistinguishable mixture of homework, supper, park football and adolescent confusion. Every now and then, however, a date would tattoo itself on the mind. Like 29 March 1994, the day England raised something even worse than hell: Curtly Ambrose's hackles. It's the kind of event that makes you remember all the little details: where your bed and TV were located in your bedroom at that time, what you had for supper (fish fingers, wolfed down urgently so that I could get back upstairs), and precisely how agape your mouth was.

A young England side had done nothing wrong apart from manoeuvre themselves into a winning position. Curtly didn't like that. Curtly wasn't happy about that. There were 15 overs remaining on the third day when England started chasing a target of 194; Ambrose struck down upon them with great vengeance and furious anger. He was further stimulated by a magnificent crowd. England could not cope with a cacophony of defiance and pride, which produced a frenzy entirely beyond my teenage English comprehension.

Mike Atherton went to the first ball of the innings, and in the blink of an eye England were 40 for eight, six of them to Ambrose. Robin Smith, Alec Stewart and Graham Thorpe all had a stump knocked flying. There was no speedgun in those days, but then Ambrose was always more about force than speed. Here it was utterly irresistible.

Few sports, if any, produce such two-eyed supporters as cricket; and, as with Adelaide 12 years later, this was the most exhilarating trauma. The formalities were completed the next morning, with England dismissed for 46. I'd been watching cricket for five years and it was the first time I'd seen England bowled out in double figures, never mind for under 50. Do you remember the first time? I can't remember a better time. RS