What was to become arguably the most devastating spell of bowling in Test history came from modest beginnings. It was early afternoon on the penultimate day of January seven years ago and, at the Waca in Perth in the final Test of a tumultuous summer, David Boon and Mark Waugh were laying the groundwork for the sort of total that would see Australia become the first side in 14 years to unseat West Indies in a series.

Just four days earlier in Adelaide, Curtly Ambrose had bowled himself into the deck, taking 10 wickets in the match before Courtney Walsh dredged up the last Australian wicket when two more runs would have clinched the series. "I was interested to hear Michael Holding say that Curtly is still learning," said Allan Border pithily afterwards. "I hope he doesn't learn too much more." Prescient words.

Ambrose had looked spent, and now - in the heat of Western Australia - 12.4 overs had brought him no wickets for 24 runs. But the Fremantle Doctor, the breeze that blows across the city from the ocean, had begun to puff its cheeks. With this over his shoulder, Ambrose strode in once more. Waugh edged and the wicketkeeper Junior Murray took the catch.

It was a catalyst. Before the eyes of a disbelieving crowd, Ambrose dismembered the Australians with seven wickets in 32 balls, delivered at high pace and of impeccable line and length: Boon taken in the slips, Border first ball at the wicket, Ian Healy caught at slip, Merv Hughes at cover, Damien Martyn also at slip and big Jo Angel another victim for Murray. The last man dismissed, Shane Warne, was run out; otherwise Ambrose would surely have collected another.

Back home in Swetes Village, a small community in Antigua's parched interior, Ambrose's mother, whose habit was to march out of her house and ring a hand bell each time her son took a wicket, might have been the St John's fire brigade in an emergency.

Less than two days later West Indies had wrapped up the match by an innings. It had been miraculous bowling, each victim greeted with arm-pumping, fist-flailing celebration, but it required no aerobatics from the ball. Ambrose simply did what he had done since his debut in Georgetown five years earlier: bowled unfailingly in the right place with uncommon bounce from his great height (the Aussie press delighted in referring to him as the "two-metre Antiguan") and a hint - just enough - of movement. The ball was drawn magnetically, mesmerically, to the edge of the bat.

That one spell encapsulated almost everything of Ambrose: pace, skill, accuracy unparalleled in a genuinely fast bowler, aggression, courage and the capacity to produce devastating bursts of wickets when the integrity of West Indies cricket was at stake.

In 1990, he sent England spiralling to defeat in the final session in Bridgetown, taking five for 18 in a 7.4-over spell with the second new ball that brought his best Test figures of eight for 45. Four years later, as England began a victory charge on a Port-of-Spain evening, he nailed Mike Atherton first ball, took six for 22 in 7.5 overs and reduced the tourists from optimism to 40 for eight and helplessness.

All but three of Ambrose's 97 Tests have been in the company of Walsh. In those games the pair have taken 752 wickets - 386 of them to Ambrose - a combination that has never been matched.

Of modern fast bowlers only Joel Garner, because of his great height, Wasim Akram, for a whole variety of reasons, and perhaps Waqar Younis, with the reverse-swung old ball, have been so awkward.

As with Garner, his height appended by the length of his arms produces a foreshortening effect, an illusion that he is a normal-sized bowler delivering from 10 feet closer. A batsman trained to look in a certain area for the ball finds himself searching above his normal focal point and Atherton, for example, has prepared for West Indies series by using a bowling machine with extendable legs.

Ambrose is 37 next month, though, and tired. The fire still burns, but he is weary of shoring up West Indies. Attempts have been made to coerce him into one last hurrah in Australia, but he has resisted. Enough is enough, he says. This is it. No mas. The end of an era.