On Sunday, Kemar Roach joined a select list of West Indies bowlers to take 300 Test wickets. He got there by dismissing dismissed Asitha Fernando. He became only the fifth bowler from West Indies to achieve this feat and, overall, the 41st.
Roach's career, spanning nearly 17 years and marred by injuries and setbacks, though has not stopped him from holding a special place in West Indies' Test history. His strike rate of 51.8 is second-best among the five West Indians with 300-plus wickets, behind only Malcolm Marshall (46.7). Overall, only eleven bowlers in the 300 club have a better bowling strike rate.
Among the best at home
Reaching 300 Test wickets wasn't the only milestone Roach completed in Tests on Sunday. He also completed 200 wickets in Tests across the Caribbean Islands. Courtney Walsh has the most with 229 wickets in the West Indies, while Curtly Ambrose has 203, currently only one ahead of Roach. His eight five-wicket hauls are only behind Ambrose, who has eleven of them.
Roach has a bowling strike rate of 45.5 in Tests at home, better than both Ambrose and Walsh. In fact, his strike rate is the fourth best among bowlers with 200-plus wickets in home Tests. Roach's average of 22.04 ranks eighth among the 25 bowlers with 200-plus wickets at home.
The milestone game of Roach was played at North Sound, his happy hunting ground in this format, having taken 60 wickets from just 11 matches, all at an average of only 16.75 and striking once every 35.9 balls. Only three bowlers with 50-plus wickets at a venue average lower than Roach at North Sound, while his strike rate is the fifth best.
Roach's second coming
Since his debut in 2009, no other West Indies bowler has even taken 200 wickets. In fact, Shannon Gabriel's 166 wickets are the second-most for West Indies in this period. Roach had taken more than that (178) since his comeback in August 2017.
Between 2009 and 2016, Roach had 122 wickets from 37 matches, while averaging 30.23 and a strike rate of 55.5.
But the numbers since that comeback in 2017 have been among the best globally. Roach averages 24.5 in this period, the eighth-best among 29 bowlers to have taken 100 or more wickets. His strike rate of 49.2 also finds a place in the top ten among those 29 bowlers.
Top-order wickets and striking early
One of the highlights of Roach's Test career is that the majority of the wickets he has taken are of the batters up the order. More than half of his career wickets have been of the players batting in the top four - 154 out of 300. The 51.33% being that of the top four is the second-best among 87 bowlers with 200 or more Test wickets.
Chaminda Vaas is marginally ahead, with 52.11, as 185 of his 355 wickets were of the top four batters. Roach ranks second even among the percentage of wickets taken of the top three batters. As many as 128 of his 300 wickets are of the top three, which translates to 42.67%, only behind Zaheer Khan's 45.02 (140 out of 311).
Success against top-order batters is not possible without making the most of the new ball, which Roach has done effectively. A total of 93 wickets have come within the first 15 overs of a Test innings for Roach. Only four bowlers have taken more wickets in this phase since his debut.
Since his comeback in 2017, Roach has ensured to bring out his best in his opening spells of the innings. He has taken 53 wickets across his first spells, all while averaging 19.04 and striking once every 43.81 balls. Among bowlers with 30 or more wickets in their first spells in this period, Roach's average is fourth best, while only five bowlers have a better strike rate.
Ahead of the rest
Often in his career, Roach found himself either lacking support or far better than his teammates, which makes his career bowling average of 26.84 much more valuable. Across the innings he bowled, the other West Indies bowlers collectively averaged only 35.20, which is 1.312 higher than Roach's average.
Among all West Indies bowlers with 100-plus wickets, the ratio ranks third highest, and is only behind Ambrose (1.401) and Marshall (1.314). When compared with all 41 bowlers with 300-plus wickets, Roach finds himself in ninth for the ratio between the bowling average of his teammates and his average.
That gap is even more evident since his comeback in 2017 - while he averaged 24.51 in this period, his teammates averaged 33.03 alongside him. The ratio here is 1.348, the fourth-highest among the 49 bowlers worldwide with 75 or more wickets in this period.
At 38, Roach has become one who should be celebrated more often. His latest milestone served as a reminder of that.