The Guardian’s editor-at-large tells the story of how he came to be called Gary – and what happend when, 50 years on, he finally met his namesake – the sporting legend Sir Garfield Sobers
Almost exactly halfway between my conception and my birth, a moment of sporting history took place that would have a significant impact on the rest of my life.
Fifty years ago this week, at St Helen’s cricket ground in Swansea, a Barbados-born Nottinghamshire batsman, Garfield (Garry) Sobers, faced the Glamorgan spin bowler Malcolm Nash. In a series of spectacular strokes, brazen and clinical in equal measure, Sobers knocked Nash for six on every ball – scoring the maximum amount of runs possible in a single over. With collar up and shirt slightly unbuttoned under his V-neck white tank top, Sobers hoisted the ball over cover and long off, into the stands or out of the stadium, as though he were swatting a fly. When he launched the sixth beyond the ground, the commentator yelled: “He’s done it. He’s done it. And my goodness, it’s gone way down to Swansea.”
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