Garry Sobers, the graceful West Indian cricketer whose world-record test innings of 365 not out as a 21-year-old set him on the path to becoming arguably the sport’s greatest allrounder, has died. He was 89.
West Indies’ cricket federation announced his death on Friday without providing a cause.
“In the story of cricket, there are great players. There are champions. Then, there are those rare individuals who redefine the very meaning of greatness,” said Kishore Shallow, president of Cricket West Indies.
“Sir Garfield Sobers was the greatest cricketer the world has ever seen. His mastery of batting, bowling and fielding was unparalleled, but his true significance reached far beyond the boundary ropes.”
Born in Bridgetown, Barbados, with an extra finger on each hand, Sobers hit 26 test centuries and had a test average of 57.78 from batting that was both elegant and powerful. He was also a versatile bowler, dangerous with both wrist-spin and fast-medium deliveries.
Sobers held a slew of records. His unbeaten 365 against Pakistan in 1958 - remarkably his first test century - was the record score for 36 years, before countryman Brian Lara bettered it. He also was the first player to reach 8,000 runs in test cricket and to hit six sixes in one over in a first-class game, for Nottinghamshire against Glamorgan in English county cricket in 1968.
All this achieved while maintaining a party lifestyle.
“Well, it’s an exaggeration to say I was partying every night. Just every other,” Sobers told The Guardian newspaper in 2002.
“The night before a test match, I’d always be out and about all night. Sometimes I didn’t sleep at all before a big game.”
Sobers played 93 tests for the West Indies from 1954-74, making his debut at age 17 and retiring at 38 with 8,032 runs, 235 wickets and 109 catches. He captained his country a then-record 39 times. He was the best fielder of his generation, so alert at slip with his quick hands.
Wisden rated him as one of the five best cricketers of the 20th century alongside Don Bradman, Jack Hobbs, Viv Richards and Shane Warne. For Bradman - widely recognized as the best cricketer of all time - Sobers was cricket’s greatest allrounder. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1975 for services to cricket.
Born July 28, 1936, Garfield St. Aubrun Sobers was raised in a poor family which lived in a one-story wooden house. One of seven children, he was age 5 when his father, a merchant seaman, died at sea.
Sobers played golf, football and basketball for Barbados but devoted himself to cricket, learning the game on the beach with bats made of palm leaves and balls of rolled-up tar.
Within a year of making his first-class debut at 16 and without ever being properly coached, Sobers was playing international cricket - initially as a left-arm slow bowler. He soon became known for his timing as a batter, the variety of his strokes and his ability to excel in all departments of the game.
“He could do anything,” former Australia captain and legendary commentator Richie Benaud said.
It took him 29 test innings to reach three figures, against Pakistan in Kingston in February 1958. It was in that innings that he went on to become the youngest triple-centurion and then break Len Hutton’s world-record mark of 364, which had stood for nearly 20 years.
Sobers was present when Lara broke his record against England in Antigua in April 1994, eventually getting out for 375.
“There was a lot of pressure on him, people telling him not to break the record, to preserve it for the legend,” Sobers recalled. “So I spoke to him in the dressing room during his innings and said, ‘Go out and do it, man.’”
Sobers is arguably most famous for smashing six sixes in one over, off spinner Malcolm Nash in a match at Swansea as Sobers pushed Nottinghamshire toward a declaration. He was caught on the fifth delivery, but the fielder fell back over the boundary.
“Wherever I go (in) any part of the world, everybody mentions the six sixes,” Sobers told the BBC. “You know, it seems as though it’s the only thing I’ve ever done in cricket.”
It made Nash a household name for the wrong reasons.
“I reckon I get asked about it if not once a week then at least once a month,” he said.
Sobers played for South Australia from 1961-64 and for Nottinghamshire from 1968-74. One of his best innings was a 254 for a Rest of the World team against Australia in 1972.
Sobers played only one one-day international, and was dismissed for 0.
He was one of the initial inductees in the ICC’s Hall of Fame in 2009.
Shallow said Sobers “became more than a sporting icon.”
“He became a symbol of Caribbean excellence, resilience, and possibility,” he said. “His achievements brought pride to Barbados, inspiration to the West Indies and admiration from every corner of the cricketing world.
Sobers, Shallow added, “has completed his final innings, but his legacy will forever endure in the hearts of our region, and the story of the cricketing world.”
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