When you’re young you don’t mind approaching sporting legends but that gets lost over the years, all of which springs to mind reflecting on the life of Gary Sobers, a Bajan legend cast in stone.
Alas, the old autograph book of the players from that cricket match in Glasgow, including the great Sir Gary’s scribble, is also a thing of the past.
While in the haze of rum from a day out at the cricket at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown I lost the courage to approach the great man, sat in the crowd.
Or ask him his recollections of Old Anniesland or the boy who had crept through the bushes to see him.
In with the bricks
Sobers, for those of us who were lucky to see him back in the day was the OG all-rounder.
And the first to hit six sixes in a six-ball over.
You can imagine just how.
Standing by his statue outside the Bridgetown ground flashing his bat in the air.
Now passing over my own limited cricket career, best score 2, playing with the Sri Lankan staff in the Maldives.
I feel that over the years I have got in with the bricks with West Indian cricket and cricketers and Barbados.
And here in fact is the evidence on the Builders of Barbados Wall of families who have contributed to the island’s history.
The shoulders of giants
And hanging out with fellow Bajan greats Joel ‘Big Bird’ Garner and Collis King.
Although I’ll never live down asking a demure small moustachioed fellow reveller at Foreday Morning during carnival if he played a bit of cricket.
Irie, if you call what Brian Lara did on a cricket pitch, playing a little.
It was, of course, fitting that it was Sir Garfield Sobers who made Brian Lara a special presentation in Antigua.
After he surpassed his world record 365.
There won’t be a cloud safe enough from Gary’s big sixes now.
RIP Sir Gary Sobers (1936-2026).