Things that Matter: Sir Garfield St. Auburn Sobers
I have at least one thing in common with our amazing National Hero, the Right Excellent Sir Garfield Sobers – a triple century! This is my column number 300 for the Sunday Advocate, and it’s an especially exhilarating feeling, as I never made more than 10 runs in any innings in school cricket!
It’s been an honour and a privilege to write a column week after week for the Grand Old Lady of Fontabelle (for youngsters reading this, that’s the nick name for the Advocate newspaper, founded 121 years ago, “For the cause that lacks assistance, ‘Gainst the wrongs that need resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that I can do”.) So I want to celebrate this milestone by joining in the celebration of Sir Gary’s latest milestone, his 80th birthday, by sharing my citation for his Honorary Degree from the University of the West Indies in 1992.
“Chancellor, I present to you the man who has done more than anyone else in 365 years of recorded history to bring Barbados to the attention of the rest of the world.
Garfield St. Auburn Sobers was born on July 28th, 1936, in the Bay Land, St. Michael. He was the last but one of seven children of Showmont and Thelma Sobers. His father was a merchant seaman, away from home for long spells at a time, and he died when the young Garfield was only six. But the strong discipline, family unity and parental influence of the household had their effect, as every good parent knows, early in life. By the age of eight, Gary, with his brothers, was busy organising local cricket with home-made bat, ball and stumps, and arranging tournaments between the boys of the neighbouring villages.
They played on the outfield of the Bay Pasture, the early home of the Wanderers Cricket Ground, arena of the great Harold Austin and George Challenor. Garfield was in great demand in the Wanderers nets, especially for his spin bowling, but even as a youngster he could bowl fast or slow as the occasion demanded. The Nationals team of Bay Land thought him too small for competition, and his talents were spotted by family friend Garnet Ashby, the ‘strong man’ showman of the forties and fifties. Garnet garnered him at age fifteen to his BCL county team of Penny Hole, St. Philip, a rustic seaside village now modernised and renamed Gemswick.
What is not generally known is that Gary was once, briefly, a budding musician. The story goes that at age fourteen he was spotted by Captain Wilfred Farmer, who had him recruited into the Police Band. He then moved, via the Police Boys Club, into the Police Sports Club, so that he could play for the Police team. After only two years of club cricket he represented Barbados against India in February 1953, at 16, as a spin bowler, taking seven wickets and bowling forty maiden overs in the match! In 1954, at 17, he played his first test. He replaced Alf Valentine in the last test against England at Sabina Park, as a spin bowler. He took four wickets and scored forty runs, but his arrival signalled the start of an era, the Sobers era, of both West Indian cricket and world cricket.
Greatness can be gauged in many ways, and the record books detail Sir Garfield’s extraordinary career for many years. Let us begin with the record of the highest Test innings of all time, 365 runs. The numerologists will have noted, as I did in my opening sentence, that 365 is the exact number of years since the Afro-European settlement of Barbados in 1627! But to continue: 93 test appearances, the highest aggregate of runs in Test matches at the time of his retirement, exceeded since only by batsmen playing many more innings; together with 109 catches and 235 wickets, not to mention ‘impossible’ feats such as hitting six sixes in one over. But no mere schoolboy cricketer and ignoramus like myself has the right to comment on Sir Garfield’s achievements. I prefer to borrow from and quote the eloquent testimony of the recognised scholars of the game.
The great C.L.R. James wrote: “Sobers was the greatest of living batsmen”. John Arlott, doyen of cricket writers, described him as the finest all round player in the history of cricket. And our own Caribbean renaissance man and craftsman of language, Michael Manley, wrote in his History of West Indies Cricket: “He was so great a player that one must be careful lest he obscure the history of events and the texture of the times”, and again: “Sobers was destined, in typically Caribbean fashion, to shine like some great star alone in the firmament of his own genius”.
It is characteristic of his modesty that Gary Sobers should have written in his first book Cricket Advance! in 1965, that comparison with Bradman is one of the worst fates that can befall any cricketer”, while Bradman himself, in the foreword to that book, wrote: “Sobers’ record entitles him to be ranked with the world’s great batsmen”. In fact, when seven years later, at Melbourne in 1972, Sobers scored 254 flawless runs in 376 minutes, Sir Donald said: “I believe Gary Sobers’ innings was probably the best ever seen in Australia”. He proceeded to make a remarkable film analysing Sobers’ batting, and made no bones in saying that he was describing a genius.
His bowling has been summarised by the Barbadian cricket writing triumvirate Sir Carlisle Burton, Ronnie Hughes and Professor Keith Sandiford, in the recent book One hundred years of organised cricket in Barbados, 1892 to 1992, in this way: “He became, in fact, the complete bowler. No individual in the history of cricket has been as versatile a bowler as Sobers at his peak.”
But it was his fielding which perhaps best expressed the sheer beauty of the natural athlete and the dramatic qualities of movement in cricket. Here again is Jamaican statesman Michael Manley on Sir Garfield’s first Test match: “In the first over Hutton steered a ball from Frank King in his general direction. Sobers moved to his right, picked up, half-pivoted, being a left-hander, and returned the ball like a bullet to the wicket-keeper. The whole thing was done with a feline quality; with that fluidity that is the hallmark of the athlete who goes beyond skill into some other extraordinary realm of unconscious co-ordination.” Sobers had arrived.
(To be continued next Sunday, September 10th)
(Professor Fraser is past Dean of Medical Sciences, UWI and Professor Emeritus of Medicine. Website: profhenryfraser.com)