off. I thought, ‘That went into orbit, pretty much’. The
lads were getting further and further away from me,
except that I still had a slip. I don’t know why. The next
one went miles over midwicket. He played everything off
the back foot. I thought ‘OK, but he’s going to mishit one
in a minute’.”
It was an optimistic thought. Looking on YouTube at the
height of Sobers’ backlift and the velocity of his follow-
through that day, throwing every available muscle and
tendon into the shot, it was hard to see even a mishit being
caught. It looked like he was batting in the last over of a
T20 match. “I always had a big backlift,” Sobers says. “It
came from learning to play with a tennis ball and having
to hit it as hard as you could or it wouldn’t go anywhere.
That day I thought, if I mishit it’s going to be very high
and the fielder might get tired waiting to catch it!”
In fact Nash’s optimism almost paid off: “I gave the
fifth one a little bit more air. He got underneath it a bit
more. Roger Davis was at long-off on the line, just in
front of us here. He got his hands ready and took the
catch but then he overbalanced and sat down on the
line. There were members shouting ‘out’ and there were
members shouting ‘six’. The umpires had a consultation.”
“I started to walk,” Sobers says, “and the crowd were all
Glamorgan fans, of course, but a lot of them said ‘you’re
not out, go back’. They wanted to see if I could hit the
sixth for six.” The umpire Eddie Philipson eventually
signalled six. “There had been nothing in my mind about
the six sixes through the over. But I thought – the last
ball – this has got to go. I don’t care where Malcolm
bowls it, it is going for six. I knew he was going to try to
trick me and bowl the quick one.”
That is one of the hallmarks of the truly great batsmen.
They seem to instinctively know where the ball will be.
Sobers had read the bowler’s mind well. “There was one
ball to go,” Nash reflects. “Tony Lewis says people kept
coming up and having a word to me, but actually no one
said anything. There was no one close enough!
“I bowled a seamer, from round the wicket off a short
run. Something I’d never done before. And it was the
worst ball of the day, never mind the over. And that
disappeared over midwicket onto the road between those
two buildings. It ended up at a bus stop way, way down
the road and this little lad picked the ball up, took it
home and brought it back the next day and it was on the
national news. [What happened to the ball afterwards
is regaled on page 78.] And there was such a long timeafterwards trying to find another ball from the dressing
room that Garry said, ‘right that’s it I’ve had enough’,
and he declared.”
How did Nash feel afterwards? “I was a little shaky at
first. But it didn’t register that this was the first time it
had ever happened. The other players were reminding me
of it, of course. OK, so it’s happened and it’s unfortunate
that it’s me. But it never affected my psyche then and it
still doesn’t now.
“Garry and I had a cigarette after,” (a Hamlet in his
case, perhaps?) “and we did a TV interview at the end of
play. I’m sure he got double the fee that I did! But I am
proud of it now. It got me on This Is Your Life and the
Wogan show, which I wouldn’t have done otherwise. And
people ring me still to ask if I was the guy that was first
hit for the six sixes. They never mention the others. I’m
part of history. And I told Garfield later – you wouldn’t
have got a knighthood without me!”
Sobers might not have won his wager either. But
comprehensive victory in that last game earned them
fourth spot.
“Actually, we should have won the Championship
that year,” Sobers said. “But, anyway, fourth got me the
bottle of champagne from a delighted Bunty at a Sunday
League game at Canterbury the following weekend.
Obviously, to be the first to get the six sixes after all the
history of the game you feel proud and honoured to have
done it. But you mustn’t get carried away by these things.
That’s for an individual. But as a team man your job is
never done.”
Nash, in fact, was the consummate team man who
always played cricket with passion, imagination and
skill. He finished just shy of 1,000 first-class wickets at
25.87, and helped Glamorgan win the Championship in- In a way his consistency allowed Sobers to do what
he did. It is common practice now for a spinner to send
down six completely different deliveries in an over to
prevent such humiliation.
The magnitude of Sobers’ achievement is that only
three times in half a century since has the feat been
repeated – by Shastri, Herschelle Gibbs (for South Africa
in an ODI against the Netherlands) and Yuvraj Singh (off
Stuart Broad in the 2007 World Twenty20 at Durban).
That day at Swansea was 10 minutes of mayhem that
confirmed one man’s supernatural status and raised
another out of anonymity. Paradoxically the latter’s
story is actually more interesting than the former’s.
Above
Sobers in action
at Lord’s
Above right
Malcolm Nash
remembers how
it all went at
Swansea
Not only, but
Also: My Life
in Cricket
By Malcolm Nash
and Richard
Bentley
PB, 224pp, St
David’s Press Getty ima
Ges/simon huGhes38 | thecricketer.com