The game was almost too easy for Garry Sobers, remembers
Duncan Hamilton, who fell for the great man at Trent Bridge
He came through the pavilion gate like the Great Gatsby gliding into a black-tie ball. There was a swaggering elegance about this entrance. I registered it in the way he lifted his patrician gaze towards the summer sky and the aristocratic entitlement inherent in every stride of his walk.
Suddenly he paused with a stage-professional’s timing – meretriciously readjusting his gloves and shifting the bat beneath his left arm – so he lingered in his own light and we could see him more clearly in its brightness.
With his upturned collar and a long-sleeved shirt loosely buttoned at the cuffs, he was the epitome of style and starry glamour. He had an insouciance that simultaneously inspired worship and envy. And when he reached the crease, I remember he took guard in his own good time; no one had the temerity to rush him. He glanced around with exaggerated care, as if the placing of the field mattered. But, of course, it didn’t. It was an act, another piece of thespian showboating.
For it struck me in retrospect that it was never a question of how many runs Garry Sobers could score. It was a matter of how many he wanted to score that day against Lancashire in late August 1970.
He hit a six that rose not
more than four feet. It would
have killed a whale
The scorecard tells me that Sobers made 52. I did not care then and do not care now about the statistics of the innings. What captivated me were the aesthetics of it. Divine sparks flew from his bat.
Sobers demonstrated a savage grace that on the one hand verged on the vengeful, as though he was righting some awful, unknowable wrong done to him, and on the other qualified indisputably as high sporting art.
I lived a shilling bus ride from Trent Bridge and on countless occasions I paid the fare willingly for the privilege of watching him. Often with my grandfather I sat on the front row of the George Parr stand, ate my packed lunch from its heavy greaseproof paper and drank dandelion and burdock from a tea flask.
My grandfather, after he scraped the Somme mud off his boots and returned from the scarring of the Great War, sought refuge in a quiet, uneventful life, which he partly found in the groomed greenery of the cricket field. He would talk about names that at first meant nothing to me: Hobbs, Hutton, Hammond, Sutcliffe.
Finally he spoke about Sobers. He did it in such a reverential way – the world record Test score, the six sixes, the label of the greatest ever allrounder – that Sobers struck me as a mythical figure, so perfect he could not possibly exist. I found it impossible to believe that this man was truly flesh; and, moreover, that I could catch the corporation bus to see him. When I did, it was love at first sight.
I was awed and slack-jawed at how easily runs came to him. Mind you, I quickly thought that everything came easily to Sobers, perhaps too easily. Occasionally the distracted slouch of his shoulders or the frustrated crease of his face betrayed that he was bored and needed to make the afternoon harder for himself by indulging in something unorthodox or risky, like a dare no one else would accept.
I saw him hit a six that rose no higher than four feet and thumped against the sight-screen like a military shell. It would have killed a whale. I saw him bowl whatever he liked – fast medium, orthodox slow left-arm and devious chinamen. I saw him take a balletic slip catch so effortlessly, the ball dropping bootstrap low and well wide of his right hand, that I do not know still how he reached it without stopping Time to get there. The liquid movement of his limbs captivated me.
With the bat he gave the impression of picking each delivery at least a full second before it was delivered, as though he got into position through psychic power as much as intuition and judgement. With the ball he could hold a game in the hard well of his palm and change it in an over.
He smiled and shook
my hand and I felt as if
I had been blessed
In memory I always see Sobers in high-definition: sharp, vivid, alive. He dominates my imagination to such an extent, and so overwhelmingly, that everyone around him is hazy and indistinct, like a photograph taken with a shaky hand. I was aware at once that he was a genius, unique and separate from the merely gifted, and I worshipped him because of it.
In the early 1970s he wore flannels with flares, which flapped enormously like the sails of a yacht. I bought a pair just like them. He used a Slazenger bat. I bought one of those too. He was sanguine but self-assured. I tried – and miserably failed – to copy that laid-back, cocky certitude. My bedroom walls were decorated with his black-and-white photograph, clipped from the pages of The Cricketer.
I longed to tell Sobers all this when I met him briefly two years ago. He had come to Leeds to make a speech. His joints were stiff now, his hair grey and his skin seamed with age. I did not care. Afterwards I waited in the long queue for his autograph, a nervous and besotted 11-year-old again. As he signed a picture and a miniature bat, I stuttered something lame and perfunctory about once living in Nottingham and admiring him. He smiled and shook my hand and I felt as if I had been blessed.
I said to his friend Basher Hassan, the old Notts opener who stood close by: “He was my boyhood hero.” Basher replied: ‘He’s heard that one a few times.’” Yes, I wanted to say, but never with such heartfelt devotion.
DUNCAN HAMILTON is a journalist and author of two award-winning sports books: Provided You Don’t Kiss Me: 20 Years With Brian Clough and Harold Larwood: The Authorised Biography of the World’s Fastest Bowler