He made his first-class debut for Barbados on 19 January 1978 against Combined Islands and finished the season with 22 wickets at 25.18, highlighted by a return of 6/39, including a hat trick, against Trinidad and Tobago.

The right-armer, bowling late in-swinging deliveries at very high pace and having developed an extremely fearsome bouncer, soon became one of the most feared and respected bowlers in the West Indies and, following the defection of many of the West Indian team to World Series Cricket, Clarke made his full Test debut at Bourda Cricket Ground in Georgetown, Guyana, against the touring Australian team on 31 March 1978.

[3] Enraged, he responded by picking up a nearby brick and hurling it into the crowd, badly injuring a spectator who later required emergency surgery to his head.

[5] Having already been selected ahead of Michael Holding to face Ian Botham's England side, Clarke was now forced to drop out of the squad.

Returning from suspension, Clarke found himself out of favour with the selectors and unable to break back into an already extremely strong West Indian bowling line-up boasting such talents as Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall and Colin Croft.

[2] In 1988 he took 63 wickets for Surrey at 14.50 while he also displayed his powerful and adventurous batting prowess, scoring a century (out of an 8th-wicket partnership of 151 with Jack Richards) from only 61 balls in 1981 (and winning the Walter Lawrence Trophy in the process).

[10] He was one week short of his 45th birthday and left his wife Peggy; his son Shakeem and four daughters; Sasha, Desiree, Dawn and Shelly.

In his obituary in The Guardian, it was written "like the Jamaican Roy Gilchrist in the 1950s, and his fellow Bajan, Charlie Griffith, in the 1960s, Clarke's weaponry was based more on sheer menace than technical accomplishment.

[14] Clarke was not shy of delivering balls patently designed to scare opposing batsmen and make them look foolish, and was regularly capable of a perfect bouncer, which having pitched then cut away sharply to follow the path of a batsman's head as he swayed away from it.