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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

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Why modern cricket will never make another Garry Sobers

The more structured cricket gets, the less room it leaves for the kind of unstructured genius that built Garry Sobers.

West Indies legend Garry Sobers was hands down the greatest all-rounder cricket has ever seen.

Watching the archive videos, as I didn’t have the privilege to watch him play, it almost confuses your brain. Is it possible for a player to do it all, and with such flair?

Cricket has gotten more professional, more scientific, and more lucrative. All of the data-driven training is great at producing specialists, but it cannot clone an unstructured genius like Sobers.

I am glad Sobers didn’t play in this era of modern cricket. Today, an academy would just have picked one lane for him by the age of 16.

Sobers batted left-handed but bowled right-arm. So, he would open the bowling with pace, then later switch to left-arm spin, then to wrist-spin. That’s almost inconceivable and unheard of now.

The great batsman Don Bradman, after watching Sobers hit 254 against Australia in January 1972, said, “I believe his innings was probably the best ever seen in Australia.”

In fact, Sobers held the world record for the highest individual score in Test cricket for nearly 40 years: 365 not out against Pakistan in 1958, made when he........

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