The 'ultimate all-round sportsman' - Sobers could do it all

ByMark Mitchener

BBC Sport Senior Journalist

Sir Garfield Sobers, who has died aged 89, was rightly chosen as one of the leading five cricketers of the 20th century - and will be remembered as arguably the best all-rounder in the history of the game.

A national hero of Barbados, he was a legend in the West Indies on the back of a Test career that spanned 20 years, and was knighted soon after his retirement.

But he will also be fondly remembered in England after playing for county side Nottinghamshire - for whom he wrote his name into the record books when he became the first man to hit six sixes in an over in a professional game.

Decades before coaches began to insist their players be 'multi-dimensional' cricketers rather than only contributing in one facet of the game, Sobers was the ultimate all-round sportsman.

A hard-hitting left-handed middle-order batter, he was capable of bowling in three distinct styles, as well as being an athletic fielder and a fine close catcher.

Indeed, he would often take the new ball, bowling left-arm fast-medium - and then return later in the innings having switched to orthodox left-arm spin, or even left-arm wrist-spin. When added to his batting and fielding, he was a captain's dream - effectively five cricketers in one.

Garfield St Aubrun Sobers was born in Bridgetown on 28 July 1936, but was only five when his merchant seaman father was killed in World War Two, leaving his mother Thelma to raise half-a-dozen children. Young Garry was born with an extra finger on each hand, which were removed during childhood.

Having excelled at several sports as a schoolboy, he was recruited to local club cricket in his early teens and made his first-class debut at the age of 16 against the Indian tourists at his home town's Kensington Oval - the ground whose pavilion would one day bear his name.

Sobers was selected to bat at number nine and bowl spin for a star-studded Barbados line-up - he was one of eight current or future Test players, of which no fewer than four would be knighted. He took four wickets in the first innings and three in the second.

And with only one other first-class appearance under his belt, his Test debut came 14 months later as a 17-year-old chosen to take on England in the final Test in Jamaica in early 1954 after the Windies' regular left-arm spinner Alf Valentine fell ill. Again, he captured four wickets on debut.

Although the famous 'Three W's' - Clyde Walcott, Everton Weekes and Frank Worrell - were the established middle order, Sobers was elevated to number six on his next Test appearance when Australia toured in 1955, and soon showed signs of his all-round quality.

Having made 47 in the second Test, he found himself as an emergency opener in the fourth, where he hit the first three balls he received - from legendary Aussie all-rounder Keith Miller - for four.

Sobers toured England for the first time in 1957, and despite only recording one half-century in five Tests, he lit up Trent Bridge - a ground where he would later shine - with an unbeaten 219 against his future county side Nottinghamshire.

Though a player of undeniable potential, it was four years into Sobers' Test career before he broke three figures for the first time, in his 17th Test - but spectacularly rewrote the record books in doing so.

Coming in at number three against Pakistan at Jamaica's Sabina Park, Sobers shared a mammoth second-wicket stand of 446 with Conrad Hunte, who was run out for 260 - but by the time West Indies declared on 1 March 1958, Sobers - still only 21 years old - was 365 not out.

It broke the previous record Test score of 364 set by England's Len Hutton in 1938, and would remain a record until 1994. But it was also the harbinger of a purple patch of batting form for Sobers, who hit five further centuries in his next five Tests, and as his seam bowling improved, he became the world's leading all-rounder of the 1960s.

Sobers was a man in demand - playing in England for Radcliffe in the Central Lancashire League between 1958 and 1962, and Norton in the North Staffordshire and South Cheshire League from 1964-1967. Meanwhile, his success in Australia in 1960-61 earned him an invitation to play for South Australia in the Sheffield Shield for three subsequent seasons.

However, his time at Radcliffe included a tragic incident when a car he was driving collided with an oncoming cattle truck in Staffordshire. His Windies team-mate Collie Smith, who was sleeping in the back seat, suffered spinal injuries and died three days later. Sobers was found guilty of careless driving and fined.

Worrell had been West Indies' first black captain, and when he retired in 1965 the 28-year-old Sobers succeeded him as skipper.

In the English summer of 1966, as the hosts celebrated a football World Cup triumph, Sobers led the Windies to a 3-1 series win including two innings victories, while contributing 722 runs, three centuries and 20 wickets himself.

Later, with South Africa consigned to sporting isolation because of its government's apartheid policy, Sobers was chosen to captain Rest of the World XIs against England and Australia in place of South African tours.

However, he attracted criticism back in the Caribbean for a politically insensitive decision to play in a double-wicket competition, external in white-minority-ruled Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1970, for which he apologised.

But he remained peerless on the field - no less a figure than Sir Donald Bradman describing his double century for the Rest of the World against the Aussies in Melbourne in 1972 as "probably the greatest exhibition of batting ever seen in Australia".

By now, he was also a hero in the East Midlands after signing for Nottinghamshire as captain. With the abolition of residential qualification for overseas players, the counties scrambled to sign world superstars like Barry Richards and Greg Chappell for the 1968 season, and Notts won the fierce race for Sobers' signature.

He continued to thrill the crowds at Trent Bridge until 1974, but it was in his first season at Notts that produced his most famous hour.

On 31 August 1968 at Swansea, Sobers was looking for some quick runs to set up a Notts declaration - and decided to take on Glamorgan seamer Malcolm Nash, who was experimenting with left-arm spin.

By chance, a BBC Wales camera crew had defied instructions to cease filming,, external and so the moment was preserved for all time as Sobers launched six successive deliveries over the ropes.

Sobers was briefly caught by Roger Davis at long-off from the fifth ball - but the fielder fell over the boundary rope in taking the catch, and six was signalled.

The sixth ball was smashed out of the ground to give Sobers another world record that has only been matched once in first-class cricket (by Ravi Shastri in 1985), and several times in limited-overs games.

Sobers remained good friends with Nash, and was among the first to pay tribute when the bowler died in 2019.

However, there was an intriguing postscript when the ball itself - or at least one purporting to be so, which was authenticated by Sobers - was sold at auction by Christie's for £26,400.

However, a lengthy investigation (and subsequent book) by journalist Grahame Lloyd has strongly suggested that the "wrong" ball from a different manufacturer was sold, though the auctioneers have denied that any mistake was made.

Rohan Kanhai replaced Sobers as West Indies captain, though he played two more Test series against England under his successor, and brought the curtain down on his first-class career at the end of the 1974 county season.

Sobers' career came too early for much involvement in limited-overs cricket, at which he would have excelled; he was out for a duck in his only one-day international appearance in 1973.

But his Test record of 8,032 runs (average 57.78) with 26 centuries, and 235 wickets across 20 years compares favourably with all of the great all-rounders who preceded or followed him. Perhaps only South Africa's Jacques Kallis, who played in many more Tests, is a pretender to the title of cricket's greatest all-rounder which was bestowed on Sobers by fellow legend Richie Benaud.

Did he have a weakness? He famously enjoyed a flutter on the horses - while he was criticised when his gambler's instinct ultimately handed West Indies a series defeat in Trinidad in 1968 when a sporting declaration as captain preceded a successful England run chase.

Less than a year after retiring, Sobers received a knighthood in the New Year Honours of 1975, which was bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II during a royal visit to Barbados.

Other awards included being named an official National Hero by the Barbados parliament, and an Officer of the Order of Australia, having acquired dual Australian citizenship through his marriage to Prudence Kirby. The couple, who later divorced, had two sons and an adopted daughter.

Sobers coached Sri Lanka in the early 1980s, during their fledgling days as a Test side, and also maintained a love affair with golf, at one point playing off a scratch handicap after taking up the game at 25.

An annual international schools' cricket tournament bearing his name was established in 1986 - and one of the Trinidadian schoolboys who had taken part, a certain Brian Charles Lara, was to break Sobers' Test batting record on 18 April 1994.

As the fans poured onto the Antigua Recreation Ground when Lara passed Sobers' mark of 365, Sir Garfield himself - who had played golf with Lara at six o'clock that morning - strode to the middle to shake the new record-holder's hand.

When cricketing bible Wisden chose its five cricketers of the 20th century, Bradman was voted in unanimously by the panel, but Sobers was second on the list with 90 votes out of 100, ahead of Sir Jack Hobbs (30), Shane Warne (27) and Sir Viv Richards (25).

In later life, he was also honoured by the International Cricket Council (ICC), who named its world player of the year trophy after him, while he officially opened the first World Cup to be staged in the Caribbean in 2007, and was an inaugural inductee of the ICC's hall of fame.

Cricket supporters the world over, who queue to be photographed by his statue outside Kensington Oval when they visit Barbados, the island for which he was such a successful sporting ambassador, are mourning a true great.