Alzarri Joseph is a reluctant interviewee. He’s been snoozing all morning in the Old Trafford Hilton Garden and rolled out of bed just in time to be ushered gently towards a one o’clock Zoom call. He stares dubiously into the camera, gold chains coiling round his neck like protective serpents.
In a West Indies bowling squad bursting with young potential, Joseph is the most exciting: 6ft 4in, 23 years old, rapid, sinuous and with a burning hunger to improve. He is also disciplined, described by someone close to the team as approaching his cricket “almost like a strict businessman” and, in an age of professional extroverts, is gloriously content to be quiet – springing out of his shell only when he is playing dominoes.
He grew up in All Saints, an Antigua village a couple of miles inland. He was slow to cricket, despite spending lots of time at the Antigua Recreation Ground where his grandma worked on the scoreboard, preferring football until he started playing at secondary school aged 14. News of his potential soon spread. After his first school game, something clicked: “I realised, this is actually really fun, I could put some work in and really become something.
“A year after that I started to put some serious work in. My dad phoned his friend Winston Benjamin [the former Leicestershire, Hampshire and West Indies fast bowler], because I realised that in a couple of years I’ve got to be the one to support my family.”
He is deadly serious about his role as a bread winner. Family drives everything. Ask him about being a father to two-year-old J’zarri and suddenly his face lights up. “It’s pretty fun – a bit frustrating at times because he’s at the age when he wants to run up and down and pick everything up and throw everything, you have to keep a really close eye on him. My grandma sends me a lot of videos when he is watching cricket and every time I show up he’s like: ‘Daddy.’
“He picked up a bat when he was six months and can’t go anywhere without a ball. But whenever I call home, my son pays the phone two minutes of attention then he runs away.”
Home is with grandma at the moment, where Joseph’s brother also lives. “Those are the people I really hold closest to me, they are my biggest motivation, my grandma, my dad, my son, my little brother.”
Round his neck, Joseph wears a locket bearing an image of his mum, Sharon. He was midway through his first Test on his home ground, against England at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in February last year, when he learned she had died after a long illness. Devastated, he somehow found the strength to pull on his whites, eking out some runs at No 10 and bowling like a dream. How did he do it? “It was pretty tough to wake up and get that message,” he says, “but I couldn’t just not go out and play. I had to go and really put a performance out, to have something to remember her that day.”
On the field that morning he was comforted by his teammates – West Indies and England wore black armbands in Sharon’s memory – and both his reserve and talent are highly respected within the team. “It was really hard for him losing his mother,” says his bowling partner Kemar Roach. “We were all behind him and supported him all the way. He wanted to play on and that shows great character – he did a fantastic job in helping us win that Test match.
“He has a great future and is maturing very fast. I’m looking forward to him leading the West Indies attack in the coming years.”
This is Joseph’s second trip to the UK. He toured in 2017, playing a Test and a couple of ODIs. This time is very different, all locked up in an inner bubble at Old Trafford, and soon Southampton, but he is coping. “It’s not too difficult. I’m not really an outgoing person, there is a team room where we have a lot of games we can play and I’ve also been watching Power on Netflix, because it is pretty long and I figured I’d probably have time to watch it.”
He is bubbling for the series to start on 8 July. “Test cricket is the pinnacle of the game. Anyone can run up and bowl 10 overs, the batsman plays a rash shot and you get five, six, seven wickets, but in Test cricket you really have to bowl for your wickets because no one is going to come out and give you one.
“I am a confident person. I try to stay positive as much as I can and not focus on negativity. Whenever I’m on the field my focus is just my cricket, it’s a pretty long game so you have to stay focused as much as possible.”
Despite being the junior member of the West Indies speed quartet – alongside Roach, Shannon Gabriel and Jason Holder – that sliced through England last winter, he holds a present danger for England. He has since played a season of IPL, taking a record-breaking six for 12 on his debut for Mumbai Indians after being called in as a replacement, and snaffled 24 ODI wickets at 23.
He does not have specific numbers in his head in terms of targets for this series, but there are no limits. “I’d like to have as many [wickets] as possible; I’d like to be the most successful bowler ever in Test cricket for the West Indies.”
He smiles.