Fidel Edwards

Few international careers have begun as abruptly as Fidel Edwards'. In 2003, with only a single first-class appearance for Barbados behind him, he found himself handed a Test cap, an extraordinary leap of faith by the selectors that paid off almost immediately. His action alone marked him out, a round-arm, slinging delivery unlike anything else in the West Indies attack at the time, one that would later draw comparisons to Jeff Thomson and Lasith Malinga.

That unusual action brought immediate rewards. His figures of 5 for 36 in the first innings on debut ranked among the finest by any West Indies player in their very first Test, and he backed it up with another five-wicket haul in his very next match, away in Zimbabwe. The same whip-like motion that made him so hard to read put enormous strain on his back, and injury soon became a recurring theme in his career. At one point, a back problem kept him out of the international game for the better part of two years, and it was not until West Indies' tour of Pakistan in 2011 that he made his way back into the Test side.

When fully fit, Edwards remained a genuine attacking threat for the better part of two decades. His finest hour with the ball came in December 2008, against New Zealand in Napier, where career-best figures of 7 for 87 also brought up his 100th Test wicket. He carried that aggression into the following year's home series against England, reserving some of his fiercest spells for Kevin Pietersen and James Anderson, and he showed the same hostility in white-ball cricket too. His ODI career, though, came to a quieter close not long after, with his final appearance in the format arriving in 2009, even as he continued turning out in Tests and T20Is for several more years. One of the highlights of that longer run came in 2012, when he was part of the West Indies squad that lifted the T20 World Cup.

Rather than wind down after that, Edwards' career simply changed direction, moving into an extended second phase built almost entirely around franchise cricket. He became one of the most well-travelled players of his generation, turning out across English county cricket, the IPL, the Big Bash League, and a host of T20 competitions around the globe. That well-travelled second act stretched his involvement in the international game all the way through to 2021, nearly two decades after it had begun with barely a first-class match to his name.