When Gary Sobers loses his chance to help Sonny! |cricket news
Garfield Sobers is the greatest all-around player of all time. In 93 Tests, he struck 8,032 runs, captured 235 wickets and took 109 catches, an absolute gem of a slider. But during the 1971 Indo-Caribbean tour, the West Indies maestro gave up Sunil Gavaskar No fewer than three times, his maiden Test series inadvertently brought a new thrill to the young opener’s career. Gavaskar described Sobers as “the greatest cricketer I have ever seen” in his book Idol and detailed those missed opportunities in his autobiography Sunny Days.“When I tried to dislodge Holder off the back foot, I was delighted to see Sobers displacing him off the back foot, with Sobers on the low, fast edge. Sobers fell down on the try but knocked the ball over. It was a lucky break,” he wrote. The opportunity came when Sonny was in his 20s and he scored 65 points on his debut. It was in the same Test that India defeated the West Indies for the first time in Trinidad. Sobers also helped Gavaskar score his first ton, literally. The opener read: “As I approached my first century, the clouds started to gather and it started drizzling. However, the game continued and in the 94th over, I survived what was probably the easiest catch.”As it turned out, Sonny caught a leaping pass from spinner Jack Norega upfield. “The ball spun and jumped, hit my glove and went to Sobers, who might have caught the ball if he had been standing before it was delivered. But Gary anticipated my forward defensive hit and had moved forward,” Gavaskar wrote. Sobers missed the opportunity to grab the ball. “At the end of the game, Gary stood in front of me and said, ‘Maan, why are you chasing me, couldn’t you have found some other fielder?’ He had dropped me three times so far and the last one was the easiest.Sonny went on to score 116 runs.But the West Indian great took it all in stride. Gavaskar scored 124 and 220 in the last Test, taking his run-scoring tally to a staggering 774 in the series. “As I walked back to the pavilion, Sobers smiled and messed up my hat,” Sonny wrote. In the 1971-72 season, the two cricketers were part of the same camp, the Rest of the World, against Australia. Sobers’ 254 game against Lillee and Co. in Melbourne was described by Donald Bradman as “the greatest game of the post-war period”. However, “it is noteworthy that he never wore leggings in his life,” Sonny wrote.
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