MOST OF CRICKET'S enduring features are admirable, like the straight bat (outside one-dayers at the death) and the straight ball, and the need for the individual to consider his team's welfare. But one feature which Should have evolved, and has not, is the respective status accorded to batsmen and to bowlers. In the course of the 19th century batting came to be perceived as the domain of the aristocrat and amateur, bowling the normal task of the manual worker. Lords Hawke and Harris did not get where they did by bowling, nor Fry or Ranji or even WG. The bowler proposeth, the batsman disposeth.

A century on, the names have changed, not the values. The high profiles, and newspaper contracts, and major endorsements, are all largely the preserve of batsmen – and not just because they are slightly more numerous than bowlers. In every country, the public reserves more adulation for a Tendulkar or Gower or Richards than for his bowling counterpart. Only in Australia is a bowler ( Shane Warne) pre-eminent. The batsman is seen as the creator: he `makes' a century, whereas the bowler `destroys' a batting order. And yet no cricketer has dominated so many Test series in the last decade as Curtly Ambrose has done.

We recall great innings freely, both the large ones like Brian Lara's and the shorter brilliant ones that might not even reach three figures. Seldom do we dwell on a bowler's Performance so fondly. Even so, three spells by Ambrose have gone into the game's lore, alongside a handful of others – Michael Holding's in Barbados, Richile Benaud's at Old Trafford in 1961 and a blitz or two by Frank Tyson. And whatever your values, England will be grateful if their Test series in the West Indies does not see one final fling from the bowler who has been the most consistently threatening (again the negative image) in the last ten years. Ambrose hounded Graeme Hick out of Test cricket as soon as he made his debut in 1991, pinning him in six innings out of seven; administered the only pair that the most durable batsman of all time, Allan Border, ever suffered; and put the frighteners up plenty more.

Don't write him off: Ambrose was not himself in Pakistan, but two of his three greatest spells have come against England

 Mike Atherton, seeking to rate Glenn McGrath at the end of last season, remarked: `he's like Curtly– he never gives you anything'. Every damned dot-ball is in the same place, neither driveable off the front foot nor forceable off the back, not only building up the pressure on the batsman with every maiden over but compelling him to concentrate on riding the kicking bounce, both containing and attacking. No regular Test fast bowler of the last decade has matched Ambrose's economy rate of 2.40 runs per over – so much so that his strength can be seen as his one Weakness, though probably not by batsmen facing him. When Ambrose made his Test debut in 1987–88, two years after his first-class, he rapidly became renowned for his yorker, but ever since he has dragged his length back to avoid the risk of being driven. Less ventured, and less gained in quantity of wickets, but fewer runs conceded.

 Holding says that he has never seen Ambrose swing the ball. Few very tall bowlers have swung it, as they pitch a shorter length than average and give the ball less scope to swing. But primarily it is the result of speed: as Cardus wrote of one fast bowler of halcyon days, there isn't time for anything else. At the start of his run, Ambrose wedges the seam between first and middle fingers, perhaps a little too tightly for swing movement, sizes up his quarry and begins an approach which like everything else is straight. If the knees are kicking up high, as Joel Garner's used to do when he was animated, and the right arm bristles skywards as Ambrose moves into his delivery, the batsman knows he is in a contest with one of the great seam-and-bounce bowlers – a rather prickly man and silent on the field, certainly no sledger, unless you are Steve Waugh.

Two of his three famous spells have occurred against England, the first in Barbados in March 1990, when England were holding out on the final afternoon. It was like precious China being swept from the mantelpiece (sorry for another image of destruction) as several months of the hardest effort by Graham Gooch and his team were turned to smithereens. Jack Russell had been in his element, fighting for five hours in a fore-run of Johannesburg 1995, and Robin Smith with him. Would twilight come to their rescue before Ambrose got them with the second ball, which, being new, would do whatever it did off the cracking surface more quickly than the old? Darkness began to close in, but not before Ambrose did, re-armed and kicking up his knees. England were on the edge of a draw, and a guaranteed share of the series, when Ambrose delivered a shooter at Russell's stumps that was unplayable, because you cannot lunge forward at a bowler who can sometimes bounce so steeply, then pinned the last four batsmen leg-before with more balls shooting low. He took five wickets in as many overs.

The second spell against England, at Port-of-Spain in 1994, was too recent for recapitulation to be bearable. He was wearing his white armbands that afternoon, and at the fall of each wicket whirled his arms upwards in a circular motion that Mike Selvey likened to doves fluttering up and away from their cot. But it was England's finest who were put to flight once Atherton had gone to the perfect first-baller, seaming in to catch a front pad barely out of the blocks. Not often do batsmen agree completely with a leg-before decision.

Against Australia at Perth in 1992–93, Ambrose's spell of seven wickets for one run was by all accounts equally awe-inspiring. Ambrose had been chugging along that season in Australia, in Northamptonshire mode. Then Dean Jones demanded that he remove his armbands during a one-dayer. In the Australian phrase, this stirred the possum. For long periods Ambrose had seen batsmen play and miss, play and miss, especially lefthanders. With the Fremantle Doctor behind him, on a bouncy WACA pitch, he finally found the edge and snuffed out seven wickets in 32 balls. Desperate to win the series-decider, Australia were `destroyed' before lunch on the third day. In three Tests at Perth, a ground where West Indies have won five times out of five, Ambrose has taken 24 wickets at 12.

 IF Ambrose has ever been taken apart in any form of serious cricket, I do not know the instance. Even the most economical of 20th-century bowlers, Wilfred Rhodes and Hedley Verity, were both taken apart once or twice by Frank Woolley. In 1994, when Ambrose did not turn up for the season's start as Northants had expected, and left their official waiting to no avail at Heathrow, he later faced Lara in record-breaking form at Northampton. Off the other bowlers Lara scored 185 from 152 balls. Ambrose bowled 45 balls at Lara, conceded 12 runs, and split his helmet.

His late appearance that season was not the only time he has been uncommunicative. St Ambrose, we are told, was a musician, a scholar and an orator, the personification of Latin Christian culture as Archbishop of Milan in the fourth century. His name-sake likes his guitar, but `orator'? Border records that, in all their years of duelling, Curtly's unfailing but sole response to him was: `Skip'. At Northampton by far his best friend was Richard Williams, the uncapped all-rounder at the opposite end of the altometer. In the West Indian dressing-room he is usually sociable, according to their physio Dennis Waight, even animated when chatting to fellow Antiguans like Winston and Kenneth Benjamin in a dialect so strong as to qualify for the name of Antiguanese. Press interviews? There have been a rare few, otherwise that will cost you.

 Viv Richards, Andy Roberts, the Benjamins, Ambrose: Richie Richardson has been an exception to the rule that Antiguan cricketers have had a certain wariness when they have first gone out into the world. Partly it must be the shyness of people from a small island. Yet even or especially among fellow West Indians, Antiguans have developed a reputation for being proud and prickly. A reputation which seems to be understandable.

A rather prickly man': like other Antiguans, Ambrose for being wary of outsiders

The image of the Caribbean as a tropical paradise is a pervasive one that does nobody any good except the travel industry. Columbus did a PR job which his Saatchi descendants would have envied. He portrayed the Caribbean as a second Eden, and the northern – European imagination has always been susceptible to any suggestion of warmth and luxuriant growth and, who knows, women as easy-going as the environment.

Seldom has reality been so distorted as by this image which was deliberately nourished for commercial advantage. The mind's-eye picture of golden sand, tranquil blue-or-turquoise sea and palm trees can be found in Barbados, though only on its west coast away from the Atlantic breakers. But Barbados is on its own, the easternmost of the islands, and made from coral. Its neighbours, the Windward Islands, are volcanic, the beaches mostly brief and black-sanded. Their climate may be ideal but the slopes of each volcano are open to erosion by the wind and their soil is thin. Growing enough to subsist is hard work, not easy indulgence in luxuriant abundance.

 Antigua's image of golden beaches is more justified, as it can claim to have one for every day of the year. But underneath the image lies a past which does Britain no credit at all, and which may help to explain the Antiguan character. Antigua seems to have been treated worse than any other British colony.

We of liberal conscience like to think that when William Wilberforce waved his wand in 1832, slavery was abolished overnight. Well, in the West Indies at any rate, what Parliament did was little more than a legal technicality for a long time. Plantation owners still wanted their land to be worked and the cane cut; and the emancipated slaves still needed houses and work, and there weren't many alternatives. In an almost seamless progression a new system took over in which the plantation owner paid his workers but clawed much of their wages back. In the sugar colonies the Contract Law gave owners almost as much control over their workers – now `tenants'– as before. They could impose a punitive fine on a tenant who refused to work any day from Monday to Friday, which hardly sounds like freedom.

 Barbados was liberal compared with Antigua. In Barbados the Contract Law was abolished as early as 1937 (no, not 1837); and a traditional liberty was that plantation workers could grow produce on their own small plot and sell it at Sunday market. Thus tenants in Barbados were able to accumulate some small capital, and from there flowed the three Cs of Bajan life, conservatism, Christianity and cricket.

In Antigua, no such liberty was allowed. Though slavery had been legally abolished, Antiguan sugar-estate workers could not grow enough food of their own because the plantation owners would not sell or lease them sufficient land. Food was grown in Barbuda, imported to Antigua and sold by the plantation owners. Antigua was therefore a monoculture, dedicated to sugar: there was hardly any alternative to working on the estates for wages that were far lower than in Guyana or Trinidad, out of which the cost of food, clothes and housing had to be found.

 LITTLE CHANGED in Antigua until after the Second World War, when the plantation families finally lost their grip on the island Legislature. When this oligarchy at last sold out and left, the popular attitude that had developed towards sugar over three centuries was well illustrated: so hated was sugar that not a cane was grown on the island, and the plantation buildings fell into disuse. But what was left? The island had lost most of its original forestation, cleared for sugar, and the resulting rain or lack of it could not sustain much agriculture. Antigua's nearest neighbour, Guadeloupe, has not been so stripped at all. As for education, according to Antigua and Barbuda by Ronald Sanders, there was no state secondary school until the 1950's. Yes, a certain prickliness is justifiable, a certain resentment about the colonial past.

If Ambrose does not play in the Kingston Test against England, it will be no great loss to West Indies if his record of only six Test wickets at Sabina Park is anything to go by. He fell sick during the tour of Pakistan, and played two Tests in Northamptonshire mode, putting the ball in the right place and not conceding many runs per over, but without fire or animation. When he was sent home, missing the third Test in Karachi, it was not back trouble according to Dennis Waight, just the wear-and-tear of a decade at the top.

But should Ambrose be omitted from the second Test at Port-of-Spain, England would be all too happy. Queen's Park Oval has usually been well-grassed and over-watered to stop it cracking up too soon (not for nothing were matting wickets used there until the 1950s). The ground has offered Ambrose perfect seam conditions: in his past four Tests there, starting in 1991–92 against Pakistan, he has taken 30 wickets for 307 runs.

Yes, the most dominating cricketer in Test matches over the last decade deserves more recognition than he has had, even though it has been in his character to stay aloof outside his dressingroom. If basketball had swept through the Caribbean slightly earlier than it has done, and carried Curtly away to the United States as it almost did, cricket in the West Indies would have fallen on harder times already.

Curtly indeed: in many years of duelling, all Ambrose ever said to Allan Border was `Skip'

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