THIRTY years ago, they were the most feared team in any professional sport, bar none.
How many broken arms?
How many lost balls into the stands?
How many records on top of records were smashed by the Clive Lloyd-captained West Indies cricket team?
No other group of men were held in such awe inside of their chosen code. Or inspired such terror.
It was not like the passion felt by battling English football clubs to knock Liverpool or Manchester United down a peg or two, or the honour which national rugby sides desired to be the ones to penetrate the aura of the All Blacks.
Cricketers genuinely did not want to even play the West Indies, particularly in the Caribbean.
There was none of this "get excited by the challenge", sports pseudo-psychology which has been preached by the modern athlete in the face of adversity.
Faced with the four-pronged demon attack of giants like Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall, Colin Croft and a rotating group of other fiery speedsters, scoring was never an important factor.
Screw your career average, there will be other games on other tours, survival was priority No1.
Jerry Coney still winces about the broken arm Garner gave him in the final test of the disastrous 1984-85 tour, losing the four-game series 2-0 and the one day series 5-0 in a familiar "Black Wash".
Ian Smith still talks with a quiver about Marshall calling out a clear promise as he and Martin Crowe staggered off after surviving a brutal afternoon in the firing line - "I will kill you in Barbados."
Ken Rutherford, then just 18-years-old, would never see his test average creep into the 40s despite a fairly distinguished career, which all goes back to being literally thrown to the lions on this tour - never making more than five in his first seven innings, including three ducks.
There was no one to replace Rutherford at the time. Mainly because no one even wanted to.
To this deadly quartet, you add the indomitable Viv Richards with the bat, the swashbuckling Caribbean pirate king who plundered bowling attacks at his leisure, being supported by the likes of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes - as destructive an opening batsmen combination as you could find.
A number of these men have since moved into administration of the West Indies Cricket Board, so they can hardly be called "ghosts of the past".
Yet ghosts are exactly what the WICB may well become after the complete debacle that has been 2015 with the player-strike over contract disputes on the aborted tour to India and now the complete shellacking of a virtual 'C' test team against Australia.
It is so bad that among the six major associations that lead the WICB - Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Leeward Islands and Windward Islands - there is a push to dissolve nearly 90 years of tradition and disband the combined side, reducing them to individual nations with second-tier ICC status.
The 6-7 West Indies players currently preferring to ply their trade in Australia's Twenty20 Big Bash League, with reasons given being old injuries making them unsuited for five-day tests through to frustrations at not being selected for years, could combine with any four random club players and they would thump the current international squad.
Only the vocal Dwayne Bravo, having missed selection since 2010, is officially "retired" from test cricket, but you cannot help the feeling that if certain board members were shown the door, then those stiff backs and dodgy knees might suddenly make a recovery.
Of the current test team, there seems to be a general malaise - a staring at the clouds while whistling - which is what fringe test opponents used to do before squads were announced for Caribbean tours, being quite happy to make their international debuts next summer, thank you very much.
Cricket changed, the West Indies didn't.
These old school players turned administrators, many of whom were allowed to continue to play for their test team after joining Kerry Packer's rebel World Series in the late 1970s, cannot seem to find any kind of resolution when it comes to organising reasonable player sabbaticals and loosening their reins on personal sponsorship contracts.
They have to do something, because after nearly five years of dispute, litigation and strike, the fear of facing the West Indies has turned into the fear of their extinction.