BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, (CANA) - Former West Indies fast bowler Malcolm Marshall died yesterday evening in hospital.

Outstanding former cricketers including Desmond Haynes and Wes Hall as well as former West Indies team psychologist Dr. Rudi Webster were at Marshall's bedside when he died at about 5.30 p.m. at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Marshall, 41, had been hospitalized ailing from cancer.

Marshall, at his peak, was the fastest bowler of his time.

Until former West Indies captain, Courtney Walsh, eclipsed his record, Marshall was the most successful West Indian bowler, having taken 376 wickets (20.95).

At the time of his passing, he was fifth on the all-time list (behind Richard Hadlee, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, and Walsh).

He had the best strike rate of all bowlers who have taken over 300 wickets in Tests.

His 35 wickets (12.65) against England in 1988 remains a West Indian record for a series. He was one of only two West Indians to have scored over 1000 runs and taken 100 wickets in Tests (Gary Sobers is the other). Marshall had the best average (20.95) of all West Indian bowlers who have taken over 55 wickets. He took five wickets in an innings 22 times and 10 wickets in a match four times - more than any other West Indian fast bowler.

He first caught the selectors' eye after many of the leading West Indian bowlers had defected to World Series Cricket. After a patient apprenticeship, the young Barbadian went on to become the fastest bowler in the world. Born in St Michael, Marshall attended St Giles' Boys' School, the same one as Wes Hall.

Encouraged as a youngster by his grandfather, Oscar Welch, he captained the Barbados youth team in the West Indies school championships, playing as a batsman and a medium-pace bowler.

Marshall remembers: "I started as a gentle-medium pacer, with an out-swinger from wide of the crease; then I realized that I could be quicker if I bowled nearer the stumps." The loose-limbed Barbadian made his first-class debut in the final match of the 1977-78 Shell Shield season, and made an immediate impact by taking six for 77 against Jamaica at Bridgetown.

This performance was sufficient to secure Marshall place in the tour party to India later that year. When he arrived back in the Caribbean, Marshall took 25 wickets in the Shield, which was a record for Barbados.

This performance helped him to keep his place in the West Indies squad for the 1979 World Cup after the Packer players did not play in any of the matches, but enjoyed considerable success that year in his first season with Hampshire, taking nine wickets on his injury-free career.

As a batsman Marshall has a sound technique and, in a team less well endowed than the powerful West Indies squad, he could have developed into an all-rounder. The paceman muses on his missed opportunities: "I've not fulfilled my batting potential", he says, "because I come in too low down the order."

In 1983, Marshall was at his most deadly. The Barbadian finished the tour of India by collecting 33 wickets at 18.81 each. His top scored of 92 took the visitors to a comprehensive victory.

In the fifth Test at Calcutta, Marshall was even more devastating than Roy Gilchrist a generation earlier, as he ran through the Indian batting to finish with six wickets for 37.

He finished a memorable series by taking five for 72 in India's only innings in the sixth Test at Madras, including the removal of the first two batsmen without a run on the board.

Perhaps Marshall's greatest moment came in the third match at Headingley, after he had broken his left thumb in the field. Despite his injury he joined Larry Gomes at the wicket, enabling the Trinidadian to reach his century and, even more remarkably, managed to hit a boundary himself.

Then, back in the field, he savaged England in returning his best Test figures of seven for 53 off a shortened run. His performance took on the bizarre when he hung on to a return catch off his own bowling from Graeme Fowler, the top-scorer in the innings. Immediately on taking the ball into the air, as he felt his injury, before removing the next batsman with his next ball. Marshall ended a splendid series by taking five for 35 at the Oval, as West Indies completed their clean sweep.

Marshall was appointed vice-captain for West Indies finishing as the leading wicket-taker again. He took 16 at 16.92 each, including a splendid five in Lahore, dismissing the first three batsmen for a mere nine runs.

Batting against Malcolm Marshall must have been like visiting a particularly fastidious dentist. The hapless patient knew for certain that any imperfection would be calmly diagnosed and ruthlessly dealt with, if necessary roots and all. In 408 first-class matches he dismissed 1,651 batsmen at an average of 19 runs each. In Test cricket his victims cost only 20 runs each and his rate of striking proclaims him to have been the most incisive of all the outstanding fast bowlers of his time.

Supported by the batting genius of Viv Richards and the class and consistency of Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge, Marshall and the pack of fast bowlers whom he led made the West Indies sides of the 1980s the most formidably effective in the history of cricket. That he was also a balanced, amiable, cheerful character with an infectious laugh and a deep love of cricket makes his death from cancer of the colon at the age of 41 the more tragic. He was surrounded by relatives and friends, including Haynes, Greenidge and Wes Hall, when he died in hospital in Bridgetown on Thursday evening.

Marshall had married his Barbadian girlfriend for the past 13 years, Connie Earle, at an emotional wedding in Hampshire only two months ago, witnessed by their nine-year-old son, Mali, to whom he was devoted. Those present knew that this most widely respected of cricketers might be suffering from a terminal illness, although his outlook was characteristically brave. Told that he had a 60-40 chance of beating his disease, which forced him to resign his position as coach to West Indies, his response was a smile and the retort: "Better than 40-60".

His passion for the game had made him a popular and generous coach and the stress of guiding a team which had been through rough waters after all the success enjoyed during Marshall's own playing days must have contributed to his illness. He was being mourned yesterday like no West Indian cricketer since Sir Frank Worrell.

Marshall made his first appearance in first-class cricket in 1977, putting down a marker at once with six wickets for 77 against Jamaica at Bridgetown. This was evidence enough for the West Indies selectors, who immediately picked him for a tough tour of India. It did not take him long to push ahead of the abundance of fast-bowling talent throughout the Caribbean.

Nimble muscular and hostile, he was a formidable competitor but a loyal and passionate teammate and, preferring the cold stare to the hot word, he never broke the game's traditional moral code. Although his bowling was respected by everyone and, not least because of his skidding, potentially lethal bouncer, literally feared by many, he was always perhaps a trifle underestimated, partly because he was so undemonstrative and modest, but also because he was relatively small, at 5ft 11ins, with an unorthodox action devoid of frills or dramatic build-up. Yet the action was memorable for its economy and clinical efficiency.

Season after season, winter and summer, between 1977 and his last appearance for Natal in 1996, he would sprint to the crease, wasting no energy, before delivering the ball chest-on with an extraordinarily quick right arm which produced electric pace. He used brain, wrist and fingers to command swing and cut both ways and, in common with Richard Hadlee, his only serious rival as the greatest fast bowler of the 1980s, he had a shrewd ability to spot a batsman's weakest point and attack it with what seemed an intuitive cunning.

Until he was overtaken by Courtney Walsh, his haul of 376 wickets in only 81 Tests was the largest by any West Indian and the frequency with which he took his wickets in the five-day game, one every 46 balls, has been bettered in modern times only by Waqar Younis and Allan Donald. The physical threat he posed was real. Skill, however, not brute force, was the essence of Marshall's success. His former Hampshire colleague and captain, Mark Nicholas, has for many years dined out on a vivid impersonation of how he would take control of a new batsman, conceiving a plan, then executing it with the accuracy of a master craftsman. Unlike many fast bowlers, however, he was brave and I have a vivid image of his brilliant one-handed batting after breaking his left thumb during the 1984 Headingley Test.

He was at his peak in that series, adding 24 wickets at 18 to 54 the previous winter, 33 in India and 21 at home to Australia. Always fit and self-disciplined, he was a natural cricketer all-round who fielded athletically and batted with élan, seeking always to enjoy himself and to entertain. He finished his 19 years of first-class cricket with seven first-class centuries. He was loved throughout his native island, where everyone seemed to know him, and his memory will be no less revered in Hampshire and Natal.

The first was to bring more public awareness to colon cancer; the second was a plea to West Indies cricketers to listen and learn.

Speaking yesterday at a press conference in tribute to Marshall, Dr Rudi Webster, who was at the former fast bowler's bedside when he died on Thursday, said:

"Three days before he died I asked Malcolm what he wanted to achieve as coach of the West Indies team.

"He started to talk for a while, paused, and then after much though said: 'I would have loved current players to listen a bit more and to try to learn a bit more about the game,'" said Webster, who was a team official during the World Cup when Marshall was diagnosed with colon cancer.

"He was worried about their attitude and the fact that they did not seem to have the desire to learn and improve their game. That disappointed him."

He also expressed the desire that future coaches get more support from officials, administrators and those within the team.

As a teary-eyed Webster spoke, Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, two former West Indies batting greats, could not hold back their emotions and wept openly - remembering a teammate, comrade and friend.

Webster, who was among a large group of family, friends and well-wishers at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, added that Marshall was peaceful in his death, but had hoped to do a bit more.

"Malcolm wanted to draw public attention to this disease and he was hoping to set up a foundation to go around the Caribbean talking to people about the illness," Webster said at the Barbados cricket Association's boardroom at Kensington Oval yesterday.

"It was a marvelous thing - the fact he went public when he did and wanted to share his illness with the world because he did not want anybody to go through what he went through."

Webster added that Marshall wanted to bring pulic attention to the illness and called on doctors to be a bit more careful in examination of colon cancer, which is the No. 2 cancer in the Western Hemisphere after lung cancer.

Marshall, 41, played 81 Tests between 1979 and 1991.

He leaves to mourn wife Connie, children Shelly and Mali, mother Elinor, grandmother Lilian Welch, brothers Michael and Emmerson, sisters Cherylann and Catherine-Ann, and nephew Mawuli.