To think that he was also among the most productive, dominant batter in the game during much of his career marks him as something of a cricketing super hero. I always thought that my first pick for an all-time world XI would be Donald Bradman. The Australian basically guaranteed a sizable number of runs every game. Sobers might not score as heavily, but he could fill almost any gap you could have in your bowling attack, making it a more rounded one. That could be very valuable, especially in Tests where you almost always need 20 wickets to win.

To many of us in the Caribbean Sobers was just on another level. It was him at the very top, daylight, and then others. There was simply nobody with the skills and the credentials to match him.

Even those of us who started following the game after he retired still saw him as someone who’d never be rivalled. One of the regrets of my life was that I never did well enough as a member of my high school’s under 14 team to be included in a group from different schools who were to be briefly coached by the great man on a visit to Jamaica. I envied the two or three teammates who were privileged enough to meet him in the flesh.

https://garfieldrobinson1.substack.com/p/garfield-sobers-a-cricketer-without