Bahamas (Kashmir English): West Indian all-rounder Garry Sobers died aged 89, according to West Indies Cricket as a great innings comes to an end.
“A great innings has come to an end. In our hearts, now and forever, Sir Garfield Sobers,” West Indies Cricket posted on social media on Friday.
Australian batsman Donald Bradman and West Indian all-rounder Garry Sobers were among the top 20th Century cricket players.
In a poll of 100 cricket experts in 1999, both Bradman and Sobers were chosen in Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the 20th Century with the West Indian all-rounder garnering 90 votes.
Bradman had an extraordinary 100 votes, and yet before his own death in 2001, the Don paid the ultimate tribute to Sobers.
“He is, in my opinion, the greatest cricketer of all time,” said the Don.
Garry Sobers as a batsman
As a batsman, Sobers scored 8,032 runs in his 93 Tests at an average of 57.78, numbers that on their own would guarantee him a place in any pantheon.
On top of that, Sobers was a bowler who took 235 wickets at 34.03 runs each.
Sometimes he would open with fast left-arm but, if the pitch was breaking up, he would switch to the left-arm spin — orthodox or wrist — that first brought him to the attention of the West Indian selectors as a teenager.
Sobers also took 109 Test catches, often at slip but, as captain, he would place himself in the danger zone at short-leg when he brought off-spinner Lance Gibbs into the attack.
“The bloke could do just about anything on a cricket field except umpire,” Australian all-rounder Alan Davidson told The Cricket Monthly on the occasion of Sobers´ 80th birthday in 2016.
“He was a complete cricketer, a magnificent fielder, bowled all types of bowling, and when in form, he absolutely decimated great bowling attacks.
“You could not set a field to him because he just had that innate ability to be able to score runs whenever he wanted to.”
Sobers was just six when his father Shamont, a merchant seaman, was killed when his ship CNS Lady Hawkins was struck by two torpedoes from a German U-boat off the North Carolina coast.
He made his debut for Barbados against the Indian tourists as a spinner in January 1953 aged just 16. The West Indian great retired from Test cricket in 1974 and was knighted a year later.
