Sobers could only do everything — including for SA's Sheffield Shield side

Sir Garfield Sobers could only do everything — including for South Australian cricket Sun 26 Jul 2026 at 7:35am The cricketer Sir Garfield St Aubrun "Garry" Sobers was a man who frequently found himself the subject of admiration and wonder. Widely recognised as the game's greatest all-rounder, Sobers — who died recently at the age of 89 — scored 8,032 runs at an average of almost 58, claimed 235 wickets and snared 109 catches in his 93 Test matches for the West Indies. But even by the time he was recruited by South Australia, as a 25-year-old in 1961, his talent was already indisputable. "I don't say this lightly — he's the greatest cricketer, in my opinion, the game has ever seen," said Ken "KG" Cunningham, who played alongside Sobers during the latter's three seasons with SA's Sheffield Shield side. "He opened the bowling, he bowled first change and bowled left arm orthodox, he was second change with left arm [wrist spin], he'd field like a demon and then he could bat. "He was five cricketers in one." In 1958, Sobers had broken the world record for the highest individual innings when he scored 365 not out against Pakistan in Jamaica — a milestone that stood for more than 35 years. His arrival in SA the summer after the famous Tied Test series occurred at a time in which there was strong enthusiasm for West Indian cricket. "It's a little bit murky how it came about, because success always has a million fathers — but it was very much on the back of the 1960/61 West Indies tour, and I think Bradman had a role in it," sportswriter Michael Sexton said of the circumstances that led to SA securing Sobers's services. "The lure of Bradman was just so important — they got on very well. He used to go and have dinner at Bradman's house in Adelaide." Sexton's book Three Summers of Sobers is a tender tribute to the cricketer's SA seasons and their culmination in Sheffield Shield victory. There are vignettes from his time at Prospect Cricket Club, where Sobers played at grade level, and the book depicts him in his off-field moments as a man who "charged past midnight, wore out barmen, gambled, chased skirts and lit every scene with the sunshine of possibility that beamed out of him". Light is also shed on the political setting, and Sexton said South Australian administrators had "to bypass the White Australia Policy" to get Sobers into the squad. It is an irony of considerable gravity that while Sobers was regarded by fellow cricketers as having reached the summit of their sport, cricket authorities were obliged to seek, with delicacy and discretion, special dispensation to keep him in the country. 'So grateful and so lucky' In person, there was nothing immediately imposing about Sobers, and little to indicate that his frame concealed an inner Hercules. The short back and sides, the pencil moustache and the V-neck sweater hardly betokened the presence of athletic genius. But Sobers was, in truth, a cricketer of whom it feels apt to borrow a bon mot: he could only do everything. The paradoxical presence of the word "only" in that statement adds the crucial note of humility that makes it especially applicable to Sobers, whose accomplishments were usually accompanied by grace. In one of his six sixes in an over for Nottinghamshire at Swansea in 1968, he performed a complete pirouette, spinning like a sprinkler on a parched outfield. His bowling action was equally aqueous. The rock back and forward sling prefigured the motions of Jeff Thomson, and the ball was released in a cascade of lithe force. "He was the best player in the world — and he's just turning up at Prospect to go and have a net with the others, because he was in that team," Sexton said. "It's an astonishing thing that happened to South Australia. It's probably the equivalent of when Bradman came in the 1930s — it's that sort of impact, isn't it? 'What on Earth is he doing here?'" For his Prospect teammates, the experience was perhaps not unlike that of an amateur dramatic society that persuades a BAFTA-winning lead to join its players, or a garage band that fills the vacant role of rhythm guitarist by recruiting a rock legend, or a model aeroplane club that without warning is gifted possession of an actual Spitfire. But Sobers's career in South Australia had unpropitious beginnings, and his initial three outings with the bat for Prospect produced a solitary run. Even so, his cricketing charisma was palpable, and Cunningham still remembers the first time they batted together for SA. "I walked down the beautiful steps at Adelaide Oval, onto the oval itself, and went to the striker's end," he said. "I looked up and I saw Sir Garfield Sobers [at the other end] and I said to myself, 'What in the hell am I doing here? I'm just Ken Cunningham. I shouldn't be here'. "I was so grateful and so lucky to be able to play with the great man." Sobers's seasons in SA were like the building and breaking of a wave, and triumph came in 1963/64. Remarkably, he took more wickets and scored more runs than any player in Australia during the summer. Among the mainstays of that Shield victory was the bowling partnership Sobers formed with leg-spinner Rex Sellers — the former took 47 wickets, the latter 46. "I s'pose we might have complemented each other," Sellers reflected. "He was very accurate, I believe I can say I was pretty accurate as well, so we created good pressure on batsmen from both ends." In SA's final game — a win against Victoria that guaranteed SA the Shield — Sobers made a century and claimed nine scalps. "He was pivotal because not only was he the best player, but he inspired the others to play better. He gave them a slight swagger and a confidence that they hadn't had before," Sexton said. "He lived up to all expectations and hopes."