Walsh back into pace of game

Retirement isn't a word that yet figures in Courtney Walsh's vocabulary.

The 38-year-old fast bowler, Test cricket's highest wicket-taker, arrived here for his fifth tour of Australia with the West Indies on Tuesday and said yesterday he had his sights set on next year's home series against South Africa.

"I've always tried to look after myself and I think I'm fortunate in that I've been able to stay away from injuries for a long time," Walsh said.

"It's difficult to say at the start of this the tour that it's going to be your last tour because I thought the English tour was going to be my last but I'm hoping to play in the home series against South Africa as well," he added.

Walsh's 34 wickets in the series of five Tests against England last summer - which the West Indies lost 3-1 - brought his tally of wickets to 473 after 122 Tests.

If he does play through the five Tests in this series and the five against South Africa in the Caribbean next March and April he should comfortably pass the previously unthinkable standard of 500 wickets.

Walsh said he decided to continue playing because he didn't think it was right to leave at the same time as his long-time partner, Curtly Ambrose, who quit after the England series.

"It wouldn't have been a good time to move away and leave a wide gap so I made the final decision for the mere fact that we have a lot of young fast bowlers coming through and Australia can be a very tough tour," he explained.

"I'm here for the team and the 500 (wickets) would be a bonus," he said. Walsh believed playing against the strongest team in international cricket at present could be an incentive to his backup fast bowlers, Nixon McLean, Merv Dillon and three newcomers Marlon Black, Kerry Jeremy and Colin Stuart.

"We know it's going to be a hard challenge and a lot of people have written us off but we're here to compete against a very good team and maybe that will bring the best out of the lot of us," he noted.

"It goes without saying that Australia is the team everybody wants to beat and it reminds us of when the West Indies were on top."

When Walsh played his debut Test, at the WACA in the 1984-85 series, the West Indies were even more dominant in world cricket than Australia at present.

He has played long enough to see the roles reversed within his career. Before he is finished, he wants to help shift it once more.