hat-tricks. Returning to Barbados, he continued to play club cricket in Bridgetown and served as a net bowler for touring national sides, proving as dangerous as anything the touring team had faced all tour. He worked as a carpenter. In November 1999 Clarke complained of feeling unwell and losing weight rapidly and saw a doctor, who could find nothing amiss. On 4 December, Clarke collapsed at his home and died suddenly of a heart attack. He was one week short of his 45th birthday and left his wife Peggy; his son Shakeem and four daughters; Sasha, Desiree, Dawn and Shelly. Reputation Whilst his Test bowling figures are not exceptional, and he was one of several particularly fast West Indies' bowlers at the time, Clarke nevertheless gained a reputation amongst his fellow players as the most intimidating and feared fast bowler of his generation. In his obituary in The Guardian, it was written "like the Jamaican Roy Gilchrist in the 1950s, and his fellow Bajan, Charlie Griffith, in the 1960s, Clarke's weaponry was based more on sheer menace than technical accomplishment. He induced fear and self-doubt in even the best batsmen." Viv Richards claimed Clarke was the only bowler he did not feel comfortable batting against, David Gower stated that Clarke was by far the fastest man he ever faced, Geoff Boycott said Clarke "scared me silly", and in the mid-1980s Garry Sobers wrote that Clarke was "the quickest and most hostile fast bowler now playing in world cricket". A truer indication of Clarke's ability perhaps lies in his first class figures. In his nine seasons with Surrey, Clarke took 591 wickets at an average of 18.99; his 193 wickets in South Africa's Currie Cup came at an average of just over 20. His overall first class figures of 942 wickets at 19.52, including three hat-tricks, is a statistic not matched by many other bowlers. Clarke was not shy of delivering balls patently designed to scare opposing batsmen and make them look foolish, and was regularly capable of a perfect bouncer, which having pitched then cut away sharply to follow the path of a batsman's head as he swayed away from it. Having duly terrified the batsman, Clarke would often follow this up with a wicket-taking high speed yorker, which the shaken-up batsman was in no condition to defend. Alan Kourie recalls that Clarke, during the unofficial West Indies 1983 rebel