Most horror movies start cheerily. There will be often be scenes in which the lead characters demonstrate the optimism, innocence and playfulness of youth – and a thoroughly misplaced sense of security. On 29 March 1994, the England team boarded their coach to the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad knowing that, all things being equal, they would return that evening drunk on victory and Tetley. Alec Stewart was asked by a Sky reporter how the team would get on. “Don’t worry”, he said, sticking his thumbs up. “We’ll be fine today.” Ten hours later, after his off stump was detonated by the final ball of the day, Graham Thorpe’s blank face told the story of an horrific trauma. England had been sliced and diced by Sir Curtly Ambrose, reduced to 40 for eight in a manner that would have shattered even Kipling’s equilibrium. This wasn’t a case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; they’d had glory snatched from them in exchange for humiliation. They never ever saw it coming at all. For a young team starting out under a new captain, it was a terrifying insight into just how tough it can be to win a Test match – especially when you are up against perhaps the greatest match winner of all.

England were given little chance when they travelled to the Caribbean in January 1994. West Indies had not lost a Test series since 1979-80, even if their victories were becoming less comfortable, and had lost only three home Tests in 16 years. England lost more than that in 1993 alone: they were walloped 4-1 at home by Australia, a miserable follow-up to a shambolic tour of India and Sri Lanka in which they lost all four Tests.

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A stirring dead-rubber win over Australia at The Oval, in their second Test under the captaincy of Atherton, provided an important injection of hope. Atherton, 25, wanted to follow the template of that Australia side by investing in young players of character and class and sticking with them through thick and thin. For the first time in 17 years, an England touring party included none of Graham Gooch, Sir Ian Botham, David Gower or Mike Gatting. The oldest player was Devon Malcolm, who turned 31 during the first Test. England lost the first two Tests emphatically, by eight wickets and then an innings. But they knew they would have to go through many hard times first, just like Australia in the mid-to-late 1980s, and there was plenty of hope in the batting of Alec Stewart, Graeme Hick and particularly Atherton, who bravely stood up to a fearsome, calculated barrage from Courtney Walsh in the first Test.

In the third match at Trinidad, they played excellently. Chris Lewis, Ian Salisbury and Angus Fraser reduced West Indies from 158 for one to 252 all out on the first day, before Graham Thorpe’s 86 and some useful tail-end batting – the last two wickets added 47 – helped England to 328.

When Jimmy Adams fell to Salisbury off the last ball of the third day, West Indies were 143 for five, a lead of 67. With only Shivnarine Chanderpaul remaining among the recognised batsmen. England were 4-11 with the bookies, having started the match at 12-1. “It’s nice to go into the rest day as favourites,” said their manager, Keith Fletcher. “I might get some sleep.”

The first sign the match might not have a happy ending for England came when Chanderpaul, on four, was put down by Hick at slip on the fourth morning. He was reprieved again by Hick on 29, another relatively straightforward chance for such a brilliant slipper.

Chanderpaul, playing only his second Test at the age of 19, frustrated England with a three-hour 50 and added 60 for the seventh wicket with Winston Benjamin. It was during that partnership the first strains of the Jaws music were heard in England’s subconscious.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alec Stewart’s off stump is uprooted by Curtly Ambrose during the final innings of the third Test at the Queen’s Park Oval, during a devastating display of fast bowling. Stewart’s 18 was the highest score of the innings. Photograph: Rebecca Naden/PA

Their frustration increased as the lead moved past 150. During a rain break, Fraser decided to nick his Middlesex team-mate Mark Ramprakash’s seat by telling him there was somebody outside the dressing-room waiting to see him – “a silly prank of the kind you often do to pass the time in these situations”, as Fraser put it. Ramprakash returned unamused and threw Fraser’s England cap in some water. Fraser booted a bin across the dressing-room and the two squared up to each other.

England eventually dismissed West Indies for 269, with Andy Caddick taking a Test-best six for 65. That included the wicket of Ambrose, bowled for 12 as he failed to connect with an enormous yahoo. Ambrose had been told to play for his partner Chanderpaul but was so affronted by Caddick copying the great Sir Richard Hadlee’s action that he wanted to “beat his bowling”. He received and accepted a rare reprimand from his team-mates for the manner of his dismissal.

Caddick, without trying or realising, had awoken the beast. Pride was one of Ambrose’s greatest weapons; pride in himself and also the West Indies. He never liked cricket as a teenager – he wanted to play basketball in the NBA – but once it became a career, the highest standards were non-negotiable for someone of his nature. He had let the team down, and they faced the prospect of a rare defeat at home. There had also been some criticism earlier in the series after a subdued performance in Jamaica; some even suggested that, at 30, Ambrose was past it and considering retirement.

All of this fuelled his ire. “I was at my best when something was on the line,” said Ambrose in his autobiography, Time to Talk, “whether it was a match, a series or even my reputation.” If it was more than one, as at Trinidad, woe betide those in his way. In the last hour and a half, he struck down upon England with great vengeance and furious anger.

England’s target was a tricky 194, when it should have been nearer 100 or 110. The extra runs also took more time out of the day; this, along with the rain break, meant only 15 overs remained on the fourth day when they started batting. Had it not rained there would have been around 40 overs left and Ambrose would have needed to keep something in the tank for a second spell. Instead he was able to throw everything at the batsmen.

England’s top six – Atherton, Stewart, Ramprakash, Robin Smith, Hick and Thorpe – looks a bit stronger on paper now than it did then. It’s easy to forget careers are always in flux and even great batsmen have periods of famine. All four of England’s middle order had been dropped or omitted at some stage during the previous summer’s Ashes and were trying to establish – or in Smith’s case re-establish – themselves at Test level.

Atherton had also been left out during the tour of India a year earlier, but now he was England’s captain and most important batsman. He sensed that, if England were one down at the close, they would be in with a great chance of victory. Instead, they were two down by the end of the first over.

“Quality bowlers essentially need two of three things: pace, movement and accuracy,” wrote Atherton in Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2001. “Ambrose had all three.” Even from the first ball of the innings. Ambrose didn’t really believe in the concept of the loosener, and his opening delivery to Atherton was a jaffa. It was full, kept a bit low and seamed back to hit him on the pad in line with off and middle. It seemed to take everyone by surprise – even Ambrose, who had almost completed his follow-through when he suddenly threw his hands up and down in one movement and snapped round to point demandingly at the umpire Steve Bucknor.

As he was doing so, Atherton’s momentum took him outside the line of off stump. He had both arms outstretched, like a suspect surrendering to police, and held the pose as he awaited the decision. He is not sure why he did so but it made for a glorious image as both men stared at Bucknor. He was a leisurely umpire at the best of times and, although the wait only lasted two or three seconds, it seemed to go on forever – a moment of tension in which, perhaps, both players instinctively realised the game would probably be decided. Bucknor raised the finger and Ambrose – whose primal celebrations in this spell were almost as memorable as the wickets – started punching an imaginary speedbag with both hands.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Curtly Ambrose celebrates as England captain Michael Atherton is left stranded by his opening ball, Atherton was out LBW and the target of 194 looked an awfully long way off. Photograph: Ben Radford/Getty Images

For a few years, before he was dragged down by his injured back and his team’s lack of spine, Atherton was England’s rock. They developed an alarming tendency to collapse when he was dismissed. That was problematic at the best of times, never mind when he got a golden duck.

The new batsman was Ramprakash, who had started his Test career splendidly against West Indies in 1991, with a series of patient 20-something innings that were far better than the bald statistics suggested. Yet in the two-and-a-half years since then he had been dropped three times; now he found himself batting at three in the England team for the first time, on the toughest tour of all. In what would become a theme of his career, runs in the final Test of an Ashes summer had got him on the winter tour. When he turned the last ball of Ambrose’s first over towards long-leg, the England fans cheered loudly: one run down, 193 to go.

Ramprakash turned for a second but was then paralysed by indecision and started skidding back and forth. By the time Walsh’s throw came to the wicket-keeper Junior Murray, Stewart had run past him at the non-striker’s end. It was a shambolic run-out that would be used in evidence against Ramprakash, apparent proof of a man who found Test cricket too much to handle mentally. Yet Ramprakash says there was a far simpler explanation for the confusion: he lost sight of Walsh and had no idea whether the ball was in his hand or not, and therefore whether a second run was viable.

It looked like a moment of blind panic, however, and as such had a huge impact on the morale of both sides. Angus Fraser recalls Atherton burying his head in a towel shouting “No, no, no” as Ramprakash was run out. After that Atherton retreated to the shower, with the crowd generously providing a wicket-update service for him.

The arrival of Robin Smith at No4 would ordinarily have been comforting for England. He was a magnificent player of quick bowling, surely the bravest player of his generation. But he was in the middle of the worst period of his Test career and was struggling to forge a working relationship with the coach Keith Fletcher; Smith later described Fletcher and Ray Illingworth as ‘the most appalling man managers, the most appalling coaches and the most appalling people that I’ve met’.

This was by far the worst of his four full series against West Indies, despite a Test-best 175 in the final game. In Trinidad he survived his first ball and willed himself to get forward to his second. “I played a beautiful forward-defensive”, he says. “The only problem was that I was about two minutes too late!” Just as Smith was completing the stroke, he heard the distinctive clink of disturbed furniture. The ball from Ambrose was so fast that it had already gone through the gate to remove his middle stump. Ambrose punched the air wildly – “as if whipping a lasso”, to use Will Luke’s great description in The Cricketer – and England were five for three in the third over.

A recurring feature of Ambrose’s great spells was his ability to read both the pitch and the match situation. He was a far more intelligent bowler than some recognised. With Trinidad getting lower and offering a little sideways movement, he bowled fast, full and straight. Both Atherton and Smith fell to off cutters that were pitched up, and in the whole mini-session he bowled only five short balls in 7.5 overs. ‘It was entirely different in its intent from Walsh’s spell in Jamaica’, wrote Atherton in his autobiography, Opening Up. “Walsh’s main aim was to intimidate while Ambrose, sensing a match to win and a wearing pitch to exploit, was only interested in wickets. Of course there was the occasional bouncer … but Ambrose’s general length was full and the effect was dramatic.”

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It made for a different type of intimidation. There was less threat to a batsman’s safety but far more to his sanity, such was the extent to which Ambrose overwhelmed England. They knew there would be knocks on their journey, they knew Test cricket was bloody hard. But this, this was unimaginable. They had innocently taken a wrong turn and ended up on the meanest streets of Test cricket.

The cacophony of joy at the Queen’s Park Oval was such that England suffered a sensory overload. “There was all the excitement, the sea of faces and the noise,” said Fraser. “The banging as Ambrose ran up to bowl. The sound just got louder and louder as each of our wickets fell … The conditions were good for Ambrose but he just worked everything into a fever pitch. We were trapped in a very intimidating environment with nowhere to go.”

The only person not making any noise was Ambrose. “He didn’t say anything”, says Hick. “Not many of the great bowlers do.” Ambrose had a silent charisma that was irresistible to West Indies fans, England batsmen – even England fans. Geoffrey Boycott, commentating for Sky, said it was “possibly the most exciting period of Test cricket I can remember in all my years of playing and watching”. In Antigua, Ambrose’s mother Hillie ran into the street to ring a handbell every time he took a wicket; in Trinidad, the unofficial cheerleader, nicknamed Blue Food, a former policeman who had been going to the ground since 1948, blew his conch-smell triumphantly. Banners such as BOYCOTT PAD UP NOW! and TOO MUCH TETLEY OLD CHAP! rubbed it in.

It was a struggle to think straight, never mind play straight. The noise and the sheer speed with which things spiralled out of control meant there was no time to take stock. There was barely time to do anything. Nasser Hussain, the 12th man, sensed the dressing-room tension before the start of the innings and decided to walk around the ground to get a chicken roti. By the time he got there, England were four down. Fraser and Lewis had a similar idea and followed Hussain at the fall of the second wicket. They only made it as far as the KFC, by which time England were five down and Lewis had to run back to pad up.

The dressing-room was a hive of chaos. “I batted at six”, says Thorpe. “Normally batting there I wouldn’t have put any kit on at all, but here I was padded up within three overs. The dressing-room was basically a load of blokes walking around getting their kit on.”

Or off. Wickets fell at such regular intervals that, although he lasted only 17 minutes, Hick’s innings was England’s fourth longest stay. “It’s all happening so fast that you don’t really gather yourself and maybe get in the right mental state”, says Hick:

There’s not much to say about my innings: I played a little half-hearted shot outside off stump and nicked off. I’d had a reasonable start to the tour having got 96 in Jamaica, and I was disappointed not to kick on from there for the rest of the trip. It was just a quality spell of bowling. There were a few average shots but that’s the pressure he builds. I would put Ambrose and Glenn McGrath in the same bracket. They gave you very little to feed off. Ambrose and Walsh had days when they would alternate – one would be a bit slower, and the next day the other one would do the hard yards. Ambrose was quick. He had enough pace. He wasn’t maybe as quick as Waqar Younis or Allan Donald but he wasn’t far below.

On that particular day he was even quicker than usual. There was no speedgun back then but the pace – and force – of Ambrose was such that all three batsmen who were bowled had a stump knocked out of the ground. The second of those was Stewart, who lost his off stump to leave England 26 for five. His 18 was comfortably the highest score of the innings. The rest of the top six made double figures – but only between them, with a total of 10 runs. Ambrose gave high-class batsmen an insight into what it’s like to be a tailender: intimidated, overwhelmed and with a legitimate fear that every ball might be the last.

The panic in the England dressing-room was such that, with the score 26 for five, they sent in Ian Salisbury at No7 as a nightwatchman for Jack Russell. Salisbury’s excellent first-innings 36 was one of the reasons England got into a winning position. Here he lasted three balls before edging Walsh to slip. When Russell fended a rare Ambrose short ball to second slip, England were 37 for seven.

Thorpe was the last of the remaining batsmen. “I was out there for a little bit of time”, he says, “but I just did a lot of fending off.” He lasted 28 balls, the longest stay of the innings, yet only managed three runs. Thorpe was just starting to change his approach, a move that was inspired by watching Brian Lara, and would became one of the great initiative-seizers of the 1990s. “I just tried to stay in the game. A few years later I would have tried to counterattack but my tactics weren’t very advanced at that stage.”

From the penultimate ball of the final over, he was torpedoed by a delivery from Ambrose that kept low and removed his off stump. Without even turning round to look at the stumps, an expressionless Thorpe shuffled off. His gazillion-yard stare is the defining image of England’s humiliation. “I’ve seen it a few times on TV”, he laughs. “I think there was a bit of shock. I was probably just thinking, ‘Crikey, Test cricket is a pretty brutal game.

‘You play well for three days and you’re in the game all the time and then – bang! – game over’.” At that stage Thorpe was still waiting for his first Test victory. Ambrose and Walsh had more Test wins than the whole England team combined.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robin Smith is out for a duck, beaten by Curtly Ambrose’s pace. ‘I played a beautiful forward-defensive’, he said. ‘The only problem was that I was about two minutes too late.’ Photograph: Rebecca Naden/PA

Thorpe, like Stewart and a few of the others, could theoretically have got forward to Ambrose, even on an uneven pitch. But in theory there’s no reason why you can’t shoot the devil in the back. It was matter over mind. “I know Boycs said we should try to get forward”, says Thorpe, “but it’s never that easy. He didn’t give too many drive balls anyway. I think I drove him twice in my whole career, once in Barbados and once at The Oval.”

The match was wrapped up the following morning. Walsh took the last two wickets and England limped past their lowest-ever total, 45 all out against Australia in 1887, by one run. Ambrose ended with figures of 10-1-24-6. He had done his work the previous night. “It is unlikely,” wrote Matthew Engel in The Guardian, “that anyone in history has been quite such a certainty to produce a performance of such magnitude when it actually matters.”

In 44 Test victories Ambrose took 229 wickets at 16.86 and was Man of the Match 14 times. Among those who have played in at least five Test wins, only Muttiah Muralitharan has a better percentage of Man of the Match awards. The timing and the manner of Ambrose’s work makes him arguably the greatest matchwinner of all.

“People ask me to explain how I can inflict these devastating, match-winning spells and I believe the simple answer is about having the strength of character to overcome adversity as all my best spells came in situations when the team was against it,” he said in Time to Talk. “It is about having sheer determination that we are not going to lose. I thrive on challenges, negative comments or anything where people doubt my ability. More often than not when I have been faced with these challenges I have come out triumphant.”

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With many bowlers, control and aggression are almost mutually exclusive, but Ambrose was able to summon one without compromising the other. He was a raging metronome. Despite his obvious greatness, England were slaughtered in the press. Such shockingly low totals were unusual in those days. They have become a much more regular occurrence since the turn of the century, and we realise that it can happen to anyone – even Australia. It feels a little harsh that the 46 all out is still used as shorthand for England’s struggles in the 1990s as there were far worse performances with bat and ball. They failed, palpably, but only in the most exacting circumstances. “When a great bowler is in the zone, I don’t care how good a player you are, the bowler will win,” said Stewart. “Ambrose was awesome.”

A 5-0 defeat seemed inevitable after that, but no side bounced back from rock bottom as effectively as England in the 1990s. They won astonishingly in the next Test at Barbados, West Indies’ first defeat there for 59 years, and a 3-1 series score was probably a slight overachievement. But the young team did not stick together: Illingworth took over as chairman of selectors later that month and started picking players in their forties, never mind their thirties. Atherton’s far-sighted vision did not become reality until Duncan Fletcher became coach in 1999.

Many of the players had fine careers nonetheless and of the team beaten in Trinidad, Atherton, Stewart, Ramprakash, Thorpe, Hick and Caddick took part in 2000 when England finally won a series against West Indies for the first time since 1968. They did so despite exceptional bowling from Ambrose and Walsh, who had a combined age of 73 and essentially spent the summer bowling 78mph off-spin. They had a doosra too.

Ambrose had already announced he would retire after the series and received a guard of honour from the England players in the final Test at The Oval. There is also a lovely picture of him walking off the field for the final time with Walsh. “It was one of the most touching moments I have seen on a field, when The Oval crowd rose to Ambrose and his great mate, Courtney Walsh, to applaud them off the field for an assumed last time,” wrote Atherton in Wisden. “They left, arm-in-arm, one sensed close to tears, and halfway up the pavilion steps Ambrose symbolically removed his famous white armbands, safe in the knowledge that his legs would have to do no more pounding.”

This was not Stockholm Syndrome; everybody loved Curtly and Courtney, even the England batsmen who they had terrorised for so long. For this generation of outstanding players who did not win the Ashes, regaining the Wisden Trophy was the crowning glory. They had survived the most brutal rite of passage to get there.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supreme Bowling is out now Photograph: PR

• Supreme Bowling: 100 Great Test Performances is published by Von Krumm and is out now and available here. The book assesses the 100 greatest Test bowling performances via statistics, mathematics, deduction and writers’ knowledge. Looking at seven categories - value, economy and strike-rate, opposition, conditions, match impact, series impact and intangibles, writers such as Rob Smyth, Rob Bagchi, Daniel Harris, Dileep Premachandran and Russell Jackson have recorded the performances in a series of 100 essays.

