The greatest of them all

THE year I was born, 1958, Garfield Sobers came with second West Indies team to tour the sub-continent. This side, captained by F.C.M. Alexander, solidly established in the Indian mind the association of Caribbean cricket with attacking strokeplay and fast bowling. The batting was held together by Sobers and his friend-cum-rival Rohan Kanhai. Kanhai scored 256 in Calcutta, handing out a beating to the googly bowlers Subhas Gupte and J.M. Ghorpade. One over from Ghorpade went for 21, including a six that hit the scoreboard, the metallic sounds ringing merrily around the ground. An awed witness was the historian-in-the- making Rudrangshu Mukherjee, then a boy of six. At play's end, Rudrangshu was taken into the pavilion to be introduced to Polly Umrigar, a friend of his father's. Polly's hands, as he remembers, were rough to the touch, bruised and coloured red by Kanhai's cover drives.

This team had within its ranks Wesley Hall, one of the greatest of new-ball bowlers, and Roy Gilchrist, faster and more furious still. A pair that could have carried all before it for years to come was to be prematurely broken. Halfway through the tour, the West Indies were down to play the North Zone in Amritsar. One of the local side's openers, Swaranjit Singh, liked to wear huge and gaily coloured turbans. Gilchrist bounced the batsman, hitting him on the head. The fast bowler later claimed that he was challenged by Singh's taunt, issued via public loudspeakers before the match, that he would "tame" Gilchrist. Others think that the bowler was provoked by the size and colour of the headgear. Anyway, his captain Gerry Alexander asked him to pitch the ball up. But Gilly bounced the opener again, and again. That was the last day of play he saw on tour, or ever again as a West Indies player, for Alexander had him sent home for "insubordination". Gilchrist was to spend the rest of his cricketing life in the Lancashire Leagues, a rebel till the end. He would appear for every league match with a white girl on his arm, not always the same one. As one would expect, the English were infuriated.

Possibly the most salient fact in the episode that ended Gilchrist's Test career is that Swaranjit and Alexander had once played at Lord's together, for Cambridge University, no less. The ties of class would, in this case, over-ride the bonds of nationality. C. L. R. James was to later write that if Frank Worrell had been in charge, Gilchrist would have behaved himself, and long served the West Indies. But Worrell was not on tour, it appears because he was not made captain. The difficulty here was race rather than class. It was still not possible for a black man to skipper the West Indies. Two years later Worrell broke the colour bar, to be succeeded by Sobers, who was to become the captain of the third Caribbean side to come to India, in 1966-67. This, as it happens, was a side manned for the most part by men from the little island of Barbados, by Conrad Hunte, Seymour Nurse, Charlie Griffith and Wesley Hall, men we can certainly speak of in the same paragraph as the three W's themselves.

I am too young to have watched Sobers in the flesh, a continuing regret. In 1966, I was eight, not old enough to be sent to watch his team play in Delhi, a city 150 miles from where we then lived. But I saw him now and again in the Sport and Pastime, photos of him cutting and sweeping and hooking and driving. Also one of him in Hyderabad, in mufti, a forkful of biryani in his left hand, saying - so the caption ran - "Maan, this great stuff". Next to Sobers stood the dimunitive Anjou Mahendru, a Bollywood starlet he was briefly engaged to. Some 30 years later I saw them together again, in the stands at Sharjah. Anjou (who had very soon broken up with Sobers, or more likely he with her) was at first sitting with Pammi Gavaskar, a row behind Sir Garfield, as he now was. Possibly at Mrs. Gavaskar's urgings, Anjou moved over to the row ahead. The Indian cameraman focussed on them but the results were not encouraging. Sir Gary looked determinedly at the field of play, never at the lady sitting beside him.

Enough of gossip, and back to the cricket. Indians know and respect the facts of Sober's fielding prowess - 108 catches, some at slip, others at covers, many at short-leg off the bowling of Lance Gibbs, all taken without helmets or shin-guards - and of his bowling - 235 wickets in three styles, breaking stands and winning matches - but admire him above all as a batsman. In 1958- 59, he hit three hundreds in the Tests, at Bombay, Calcutta and Kanpur. Eight years later he scored none, resting content with five half-centuries in five innings. The second of these won a Test, the last saved another. In Bombay, the tourists were 50 for 3 chasing 191, the wickets all falling to B.S. Chandrasekhar. After lunch, Sobers came in to join Clive Lloyd, playing his first Test. If one of them went the tail would be exposed. Attack Chandra, Sobers now told Lloyd, play him as a googly bowler and drive him through the off-side on the rise. With the captain showing the way the pair added 100 in an hour and a quarter, and the match was won. As they walked off, Lloyd thanked Gary for his advice. "I was doing it for myself", came the reply, "for I had to get to the race course - I have good tips for the four o'clock and the 4:30."

Sadly none of Sobers' Indian innings have been captured on camera. My own best views of Sobers the batsman lie in two films shot in Australia, sent to the Australian High Commission in New Delhi, and shown by me to the students of St. Stephen's College every year between 1974 and 1979. The first film, somewhat indistinct, is of the Brisbane Tied Test, and has shots of Sobers in his first innings of 132. The second film, of altogether superior quality, highlights his 254 for the Rest of the World against Australia at Melbourne in 1972 - an innings another knight, Sir Donald Bradman, insisted was the finest ever played in Australia. Sobers had missed the previous Test through injury, being absent while Denis Lillee, in his first season in international cricket, claimed 8 for 29. This time around the young lion was subject to a battering, chiefly through the off side, with a few soaring hooks thrown in. There was a time when Lillee was bowling to Sobers with a deep point and a deep cover, the men bisected time and again by drives played on tiptoe. When Kerry O' Keefe came on to bowl his leg-spinners, Sobers hit him for two successive sixes, from the crease each time, the first over long-on, the second over long-off.

It is impossible to convey in print the charm and grace of Sobers' batsmanship. Or, indeed, of his personality. Let me then take resource to the testimony of one of his most worthy opponents, Hanif Mohammed. Asked recently to compare his contemporary with Brian Lara, Hanif said that Lara "is a world- class batsman. But Gary Sobers was something else. He was four in one. Lara's genius, by contrast, is one-dimensional". The Pakistani believed that "Sobers was sent to earth by God to play cricket. All good players were rolled into one player and that was Sobers".

My last sight of Sobers on the television was at the Recreation Oval at Antigua, the home ground of Viv Richards. In chronology and cricketing greatness, Richards comes roughly between Gary Sobers and Brian Lara.

The match of which I speak was the one in which Lara made 375. After his 366th run play was interrupted, as the previous record- holder walked onto the field to officially pass on the baton. The shoulders drooped slightly, the knees were a little more "knocked" than before, but all who saw him that day knew they were, once more and fleetingly, in the presence of a greatness the like of which no cricket field will ever see again.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

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