Sobers, Garfield

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Sobers, Garfield

July 28, 1936

World-renowned cricket legend Sir Garfield St. Auburn Sobers is regarded as among the most extraordinarily talented all-round players of the sport during the twentieth century. His towering feats at batting, bowling, and fielding were executed at the international level during his twenty-one-year professional career from 1953 to 1974 playing for the West Indies team, whose players are selected from the Anglophone Caribbean countries. Sir Garfield's most spectacular performances were made in test matches against Australian, English, Indian, New Zealand, and Pakistani teams. In the process he set a number of world records that took decades to break, while others have never been broken.

In recognition of his many outstanding cricketing achievements as a player and team captain and of his overall influence on the game, he was knighted by England's Queen Elizabeth II in 1975 and made a National Hero of Barbados in 1998. A larger-than-life statue of him was unveiled in Barbados in 2002, and Barbados's major sports complex is named after him. He has also received numerous awards from groups and organizations in the Caribbean, as well as around the world, including the Black Hall of Fame in the United States.

Sir Garfield was born in the Bay Land, St. Michael, Barbados, the fifth of six children to Sharmont and Thelma Sobers. When Garfield was five years old, his father, a merchant seaman, died on board a Canadian ship that was torpedoed in January 1942 by a German submarine. Young Garfield attended the Bay Street Boys' School near his home but became intensely involved in a wide range of sports from soccer to basketball. By the age of thirteen he exhibited exceptional bowling cricket skills and with limited mentoring rapidly emerged as one of the best youth players in his country. Three years later at age sixteen he was selected by the Barbados Cricket Board to play in his first international competition against the touring team from India in 1953. The following year he made his debut for the West Indies, playing against England's test team, and at seventeen became the second youngest player to represent the region in international cricket.

Over his professional cricketing career, Sobers played almost year-round in league and county games for Nottinghamshire in England and for South Australia. His international test records include taking 235 wickets and scoring 365 undefeated runs in 614 minutes, which remained the highest score in international cricket for thirty-six years until the record was broken by Trinidadian Brian Lara in April 1994. Sir Garfield because the first player in test cricket to score over 8,000 runs, which included making 26 centuries. At bowling, he became the first West Indian player to take over 100 wickets against English test teams. He also set a record in playing in eighty-five consecutive test matches, and he played in thirty-nine consecutive test matches as team captain. During his captaincy, he drew twenty test matches, lost ten and won nine. He still holds a number of records of batting partnerships with other players. Sobers played in ninety-three world test matches, batted in 160 innings, and was not out twenty-one times and made an average of 57.78 runs. As a bowler, he delivered 21,599 balls, had 978 maiden overs, and took 235 wickets for an average of 34.03 runs.

Sobers was first made the captain of his team in March 1964 and led it to victory against three world-class teams from 1965 to 1967. He led the West Indies team to its first-ever test series victory over the Australian team in 1965 to win the Frank Worrell trophy. The following year he led his team over the English team and won the Wisden Trophy, and the year after that he had a victory in the Indian test team series. Sir Garfield's last test match, against England in 1973, was played at the famous Lord's Cricket Grounds and he made 150 runs in one innings.

At the height of his popularity, Sobers married Prudence Kirby of Melbourne, Australia, on September 11, 1969, and later became the father of two sons and a daughter, Matthew, Daniel, and Genevieve.

Sir Garfield's retirement from international professional cricket did not diminish his enthusiasm for the promotion of cricket and other sports. In the early 1980s he coached the Sri Lanka National Cricket Team for two years and assisted it in achieving international playing status. He also worked for various Caribbean organizations promoting improved playing standards in a number of sports. In 1987 he helped establish the Sir Garfield Sobers International Schoolboys Tournament, which still sponsors youth cricket teams from various parts of the Caribbean as well as England, Canada, South Africa, Australia, India, and New Zealand to improve their skills and compete in a series of matches during the summer months.

Additionally, Sir Garfield has remained an ardent promoter of golf throughout the Caribbean. The 2005 Sir Garry Sobers Festival of Golf was held in mid-May in Barbados simultaneously at three major golf courses and attracted 253 golfers from around the Caribbean who participated in a fifty-four-hole event over three days.

See also Headley, George