Running along the banks of the Constitution River in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, stands National Heroes Square, a testament to the ten greatest figures in the island’s history.
Among them are slave rebels, Barbados’s first black politician and its first prime minister.
The tenth name is Sir Garfield St Aubrun Sobers.
The inclusion of a cricketer alongside names that broke the country free from British rule should come as no surprise. Barbados’s affinity with the sport runs deeper than most.
For Barbadians, cricket was a chance to prove their worth to the colonial oppressors. It was a vessel through which nationalistic fervour could be honed and channelled into a political movement. And it was the game that gave them Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner. Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge. Weekes, Worrell and Walcott. And Sir Garry.
In 20 years playing for the West Indies Sobers dominated with bat, ball and in the field. His Test batting average of 57.78 ranks 11th all-time, and none of the ten above him played more than his 93 Tests. None took 235 wickets either, proof of Sobers’s once-in-a-generation talent.
In his formative cricketing years however, he was unrecognisable from the player he would become. Originally drafted in as a spinner, Sobers garnered a reputation for tidy performances with the bat without ever going on to make significant contributions.
Four years into his time in the Test team, Sobers was yet to make a century and had a highest score of 66. Still only 21 when Pakistan toured the Caribbean in 1957-58, he produced the defining innings of his career. Len Hutton’s 364 against Australia had stood as the world record individual score for 20 years when Sobers came to the crease, and was thought to be unbeatable after the introduction of time-limited Tests.
When captain Gerry Alexander finally declared 614 minutes of play later at Kingston’s Sabina Park, Sobers walked off 365 not out. It would remain the record for 36 years.
None of the 38 boundaries in Sobers’s mammoth total were sixes, a statistic at odds with how many came to know his batting style. The image of a power-hitting destroyer was shaped by his second-best-known innings, which came a decade later in the whites of Nottinghamshire.
Facing Glamorgan spinner Malcolm Nash, Sobers deposited all six deliveries of an over beyond the ropes, becoming the first player to achieve the feat in a first-class game. Nash maintains the only bad ball of the six was the final delivery and Sobers was caught on the fifth ball, but the fielder stumbled and dropped the ball over the boundary.
To hold the honour of being both Test cricket’s highest single-innings scorer and one of a select few to hit six sixes in an over is an accolade so far only Sobers has claimed. But in characteristically humble style, such achievements were brushed aside.
‘The game is always going to be bigger than the man,’ he once said. ‘It doesn’t matter what you are doing, records or whatever, somebody is just going to come along and break your records.’
On his second assertion, Sobers was correct. In 1994 he saw his record Test total surpassed by Brian Lara, the title perhaps fittingly passing to a similarly distinguished West Indian left-hander.
But as for his declaration that no cricketer supersedes his craft, Sobers was wrong. He was far more than just a sportsman to Barbadians, exemplified by his appearance on the National Heroes list and the honorific ‘Right Excellent’ that came with it.
His legacy within cricket is easy to trace, as the defining all-rounder to whom all who follow are compared. Looking for a title for their Player of the Year Award in 2013, the International Cricket Council employed a panel of former players to be given the honour. Richie Benaud, Sunil Gavaskar and Michael Holding returned a unanimous verdict – Sobers.
The West Indian team he played in and eventually captained was by no means the islands’ most successful, still beset by administrative troubles and lacking the genuine pace bowlers that would come to define the all-conquering sides of the 70s and 80s.
But what endures from his time in the game is what he embodied for a nation fresh from the horrors of colonial rule, and a man made famous by what he did within 22 yards will be remembered the world over. To Barbados he was a national hero. To the rest of the world he was Sir Garry, and the greatest all-round cricketer the world may ever see.
By George Bond
