Garfield St Aubrun Sobers (Sir) is ranked amongst the great­est of West In­di­ans, com­pa­ra­ble to Tou­s­saint L’Ou­ver­ture—who turned back Napoleon’s army, Frank Wor­rell, he un­der­stood the strength of a unit­ed WI team, CLR James, con­sid­ered one of the most sig­nif­i­cant in­tel­lec­tu­als of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, and in lit­er­a­ture and the arts, Sobers takes his place along­side our great No­bel Lau­re­ates, West In­di­an writ­ers, Vidya Naipaul and Derek Wal­cott.

What Gar­ry Sobers did was to dis­play that West In­di­an ca­pac­i­ty for great­ness con­tained with­in him­self which must have been placed there by the god of gifts to hu­man­i­ty. What Sobers did was to first un­der­stand that tal­ent, and over two-plus decades on the world stage, de­vel­op it and the skills, men­tal and phys­i­cal to the point of him be­ing un­sur­passed on the crick­et field; per­haps in­to the fu­ture.

In­dica­tive of his ex­press­ing the tal­ent he had with­in him, Sobers was a mere 21 years old, bat­ting in on­ly his 12th Test match at Sabi­na Park, Ja­maica, when he broke the world bat­ting record of Sir Len Hut­ton, scor­ing 365 not out against Pak­istan it re­mained tri­umphant for 36 years.

Sobers - The all­rounder

Sobers must not on­ly be rat­ed as the great­est all-round crick­eter to have played the game, but by my reck­on­ing as dis­played in his ca­reer of su­per ex­cel­lence in four very dis­tinct el­e­ments of the sport he played: bat­ting, bowl­ing, field­ing and cap­tain­cy, he was the great­est ath­lete of all time. Oth­er sport­ing greats such as Pele, Muhammed Ali, Woods, Nick­laus and Djokovic, their great­ness came in one dis­tinct dis­ci­pline of the game they played.

There is no record of Sobers be­ing coached in any se­ri­ous and pro­longed man­ner. In ad­di­tion to the gifts he came in­to the world with, he added to that West In­di­an in­her­ent ca­pac­i­ty to stand on the world stage and dis­play world class tal­ents. And he did so with an ease which made out­stand­ing ge­nius look easy.

His great­ness was ev­i­dent in his stats in bat­ting, bowl­ing, field­ing and his cap­tain­cy—and I shall come to the lat­ter; but in the in­stance of bat­ting, Sobers, whether at num­ber 3 in his ear­ly days or down at num­ber 6, dis­played his ge­nius to change a game to his and his team’s pref­er­ence. When a sit­u­a­tion war­rant­ed it, he tore in­to a bowl­ing at­tack with grace, el­e­gance and pow­er.

I saw him straight dri­ve, with his long back swing, bat­ting at the Pavil­ion end at the Queen’s Park Oval, one of the world’s great­est left-arm or­tho­dox spin­ners, In­dia’s Bis­han Singh Be­di, flat on­to the sight screen at the King George V Park end. He did so with the great­est of ease, a dis­play of his ge­nius and pow­er.

Against Eng­land in the 1967-68 se­ries at Sabi­na Park, Ja­maica, against a ram­pag­ing Eng­land fast bowler, John Snow, 7 for 49, Sobers made 113 not out, gen­er­at­ing the com­ment from the scribes, that while the glass-like pitch gen­er­at­ed pace and Snow’s ag­gres­sion caused most bats­men night­mares, Sobers seemed to be bat­ting on an­oth­er pitch.

In the great­est in­nings said to have been played in Aus­tralia, Sobers took on the young, ag­gres­sive and hos­tile, Den­nis Lillee, who Sobers con­sid­ered an up­start with his short-pitched bowl­ing, and played what Sir Don­ald Brad­man, con­sid­ered to have been the great­est in­nings ever played by a bats­man Down Un­der. From the DON, that can­not be con­sid­ered rhetoric, he was not known to be char­i­ta­ble with his prais­es as he must have judged bat­ting in such an in­nings by his own tow­er­ing stan­dards.

Eng­lish bats­man Ge­off Boy­cott and Aus­tralian Ian Chap­pell, both crit­i­cal judges of play­ers, have rat­ed Sobers the best bats­man they played with and against. There was a pe­ri­od in the 1960s in­to the 1970s, when there was talk of Graeme Pol­lock, the South African left han­der, be­ing con­sid­ered by a few pun­dits as a ri­val to Sobers. Wes Hall in “Pace Like Fire”, not­ed that he kept Pol­lock qui­et by bounc­ers around his shoul­der and neck and even­tu­al­ly got him out. Hall said if and when he tried that against his Bar­ba­di­an team­mate and WI cap­tain Gar­ry Sobers, the ball land­ed out of the ground. Talk done!

Sobers - The bowler with three styles

Sobers’ bowl­ing, as is well-known in the crick­et­ing world, came in three styles, as a left arm fast medi­um bowler who swung the ball both ways, of­ten trap­ping open­ing bats­men such as Boy­cott with the in-swinger which dart­ed back af­ter pitch­ing out­side the off-stump.

When war­rant­ed, due to the state of the pitch and the en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, Sobers opened the at­tack in pref­er­ence to one of Wes Hall or Char­lie Grif­fith. The re­sult was usu­al­ly an ear­ly wick­et or two to break in­to the mid­dle or­der of the bat­ting of the op­pos­ing team. Like the spe­cial­ly gift­ed, he had a sense for an oc­ca­sion.

In his oth­er styles of bowl­ing, Sobers re­vert­ed to his slow left-arm or­tho­dox spin­ners, and al­so bowled one of the most dif­fi­cult of bowl­ing dis­ci­plines, the un­ortho­dox left arm leg spin and googlies. Field­ing in the slips and in the short back­ward square leg po­si­tion, he formed an ir­re­sistible team with his off-spin­ner, Lance Gibbs, who at one time held the world record num­ber of wick­ets 307, dozens of those wick­ets were in part­ner­ship with his cap­tain.

Sobers in­her­it­ed the great team of Sir Frank Wor­rell and con­quered Aus­tralia in 1965 and Eng­land in the fol­low­ing year on their home ground to be­come the World Cham­pi­ons. In the Eng­land se­ries his fig­ures give an in­di­ca­tion of the kind of dom­i­nance he ex­er­cised for over 20 years on the crick­et pitch­es of the world. He scored 722 runs at an av­er­age of 103.14, with three cen­turies. He al­so took 20 wick­ets at an av­er­age of 27.25. The West In­dies won the five-match se­ries 3–1. The da­ta from Tony Co­zi­er’s “West In­dies, Fifty Years of Test crick­et”.

“Who’s the great­est crick­eter on earth or mars, every­one can tell yuh, it’s the great Sir Garfield Sobers, this hand­some Bar­ba­di­an lad, re­al­ly knows his job, bat­ting or bowl­ing, he’s the crick­et King, three cheers for cap­tain Sobers,” the Mighty Spar­row an­nounced to the world af­ter the West In­dies at­tained the sta­tus of World Cham­pi­ons.

But ca­lyp­so­ni­ans are not eas­i­ly pleased. “Sobers as a cap­tain, he want plen­ty coach­ing,” was the cry of an­oth­er ca­lyp­son­ian, this time the dis­ap­point­ed bard, Re­la­tor; the song came af­ter In­dia’s first de­feat of the West In­dies, 1971.

Sobers - The com­pet­i­tive cap­tain

Sobers was al­so se­vere­ly judged as cap­tain by what was con­sid­ered his “over-gen­er­ous” de­c­la­ra­tion (92-2) in the fourth Test of the Eng­land 1966-67 se­ries here at the QPO giv­ing Eng­land 215 runs to win, Boy­cott and Cow­drey scor­ing 73 and 8o not out, won the game eas­i­ly for their team. But that was the spir­it of the great man. Not on­ly he must have felt con­fi­dent that his bowlers, Hall and Grif­fith, Gibbs and him­self could get the wick­ets, but it was in his na­ture to push for a de­ci­sion rather than a drea­ry draw; the spec­tre of WI bat­ting out the last day with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of a de­ci­sion, did not ap­peal to his com­bat­ive spir­it.

An­oth­er oc­ca­sion when there was quite a mea­sure of crit­i­cism of Sobers came when he went to Rhode­sia un­der the racist regime of Ian Smith to play a char­i­ty “dou­ble wick­et” game.

That was to say the least, not ap­pre­ci­at­ed by Forbes Burn­ham, Pres­i­dent of Guyana. He is­sued a ban on Sobers from play­ing there. Ja­maica, joined in the crit­i­cism of Sobers.

PM Dr Er­ic Williams let­ter to Pres­i­dent Burn­ham

T&T PM Er­ic Williams, the his­to­ri­an, un­der­stood that this great West In­di­an hero, should not be made to be ei­ther banned from play­ing in Guyana, and pos­si­bly Ja­maica, and to be seen as “grov­el­ing” be­fore these lead­ers. He wrote a let­ter of apol­o­gy to Pres­i­dent Burn­ham, which Sobers signed and the great man was al­lowed in­to Guyana to cap­tain and play for the WI.

The im­por­tant point was that Dr Williams, the his­to­ri­an of Cap­i­tal­ism and Slav­ery, un­der­stood that this un­sur­pass­ing West In­di­an, “King Sug­ar”, the ti­tle of his bi­og­ra­phy, could not be banned from play­ing Test crick­et in the West In­dies by at least one coun­try. He knew that would have been a stain on the ca­reer of this West In­di­an, cho­sen by the gods of na­ture and crick­et, could not be re­duced to reg­u­la­tion hu­man sta­tus.

“Sobers was every­thing you could want on the crick­et field, bat­ting, bowl­ing, field­ing,” says WI wick­et keep­er/bats­man, Deryck Mur­ray. “He was con­stant­ly and con­tin­u­ous­ly of in­flu­ence on every sin­gle ball that was bowled, and in what­ev­er ca­pac­i­ty; and he did what­ev­er was nec­es­sary at the time, and was so com­fort­able do­ing it,” says Mur­ray who played along­side Sobers on the WI tour of Eng­land in 1963.

“When Sobers is rat­ed as the great­est crick­eter of all time, he is un­der­rat­ed,” is the view of Mur­ray. He of­ten walked be­fore the um­pire raised a fin­ger, did not ha­rangue um­pires in the mod­ern ways of car­ry­ing on, and did not sledge op­po­nents. RIP Sir Garfield Sobers of Bar­dos and the W.I.

Sir Garfield “Gar­ry” Sobers ac­cu­mu­lat­ed 8,032 runs and took 235 wick­ets in his 93 Test match­es for the West In­dies. [1] First Class crick­et, Sobers played for Bar­ba­dos, Not­ting­hamp­shire, Eng­lish Coun­ty Crick­et, and South Aus­tralia – 383 match­es, 28,314 runs at an av­er­age of 54.57, 86 cen­turies, took 1,043 wick­ets at 27.75, av­er­age 27.75.