The local cricketing community is still getting to grips with the death of former Devonshire Recreation Club, Somerset Cup Match and Bermuda fast bowler Anthony ‘Pacer’ Edwards.

He died on Tuesday following injuries suffered in a bike accident two weeks earlier.

Edwards earned a reputation as one of the Island’s most feared bowlers during the 1980s after breaking into the Devonshire team as a 16-year-old in their 1979 league winning side.

The same year he featured for Bermuda under captain Charlie Marshall that won the International Youth Tournament in Canada.

Edwards made his Cup Match debut in 1982 under John Tucker and played for nine years while also representing the Bermuda senior national team. Winston ‘Coe’ Trott was a team-mate of Edwards’s at Devonshire and also played alongside him in the 1982 and ‘83 Cup Match teams.

“In his first year in Cup Match he didn’t get any wickets until we went down and had a chat with him to find out what was going on and then he was able to loosen up and got that first wicket,” Trott said. “I already had a couple of wickets and then he made his breakthrough and went past me in a hurry.”

Trott was one of the senior players at Devonshire who quickly recognised that the lanky teenager was something special.

“He was a real talent when he came through and he made the grade pretty quickly,” said Trott. “I guess he got the nickname from his mates and the fans who wanted to see him bowl fast.

“He had a fan club on the western end at the Rec which was the end he bowled from.”

Trott kept in touch with Edwards over the years after both stopped playing.

“I saw him pretty regular, my shop is in Wellbottom, not far from where he used to work. He was in the mechanical field and a couple of times would take my vehicles to get them tuned up and examined.”

Tucker did not hesitate to include Edwards in his team in ‘82 and the move paid off as Somerset won the match at home.

“I saw the potential in him and we were looking for good young fast bowlers who could give us a few years and Pacer was one of them,” Tucker said.

“He was an excellent young bowler, had a lot of fight in him and was pretty quick also. He had a lot of determination and wanted to bowl real fast.”

Gladstone ‘Sad’ Brown was captain of Devonshire at the time and also coming to the end of his Cup Match career when Edwards broke through.

“Actually when he came to the Rec he was terrorising all the boys in school cricket,” Brown said. “He enjoyed bowling fast, but always liked a challenge, the better the opposition the better he performed.

“I remember he had a hitch in his bowling and we just worked with him one session to smooth it out, I remember it so clearly.

“He was absolutely a fantastic team player who wanted to win no matter who he played for. Of course like all bowlers he fancied himself as a bit of a batsman.”

Calix Smith and Donald Norford represented the next generation at Devonshire when Edwards started to break through. Both became good friends of the fast bowler, with Smith the godfather of Edwards’ daughter.

“He came to Bermuda very young and when I first met him he was 13, 14 walking through Happy Valley,” Smith remembers. “We just got tight, and were tight from the time we met until the time he died.

“I used to go to see him pretty much every day. He loved the game with a passion.”

Edwards was one of the young players recruited to play for Devonshire by McDonald Swan after four senior players, Brown, Trott, Lionel Thomas and Barry DeCouto, went away with the Bermuda team for the ICC Trophy and left the league team depleted.

“Pacer was young and they asked me to come out and help out because I had stopped playing by then,” Smith said. “Pacer ran the show as far as the bowling attack, he and [Erskine] ‘Choe’ Smith, and we ended up winning the league.”

Norford broke into the Devonshire senior team along with Edwards and remembers him as a fierce competitor. “We came up playing junior cricket under McDonald Swan ... myself, Pacer, Anthony Amory and Paul Pearce,” said Norford.

“Devonshire Rec junior cricket under ‘Bull’ Swan was a wonderful time.

“I remember ‘Coe’ Trott telling him ‘don’t try stuff right now, just bowl fast’ and we started calling him Pacer.

“On the pitch he was a fierce competitor and he left it all out there on the field. A nurse told us today [Tuesday] that’s how he fought at the hospital, right to the end.”