Rugby, cricket and music: memories of 1968/9

Yesterday's post¹ about the death of Gary Sobers (and previously, JPR Williams² and Mike Procter³) show how important professional sports (even though rugby was amateur) to me at an early age. After all, I was a few weeks short of my 12^th birthday when I saw Sobers in the flesh. For a few years, I was a junior member of Bristol RFC and Gloucestershire CC, allowing me entrance to the members' area and a much better view of the games. It wouldn't be for another year before sports began giving way to music as my primary hobby, or as I should say, obsession.

I don't think that I realised at the time, but I was lucky to see Sobers in the flesh because it seemed that once a player had reached international level, he stopped playing at the club/county level. As I noted in the obituary of JPR Williams, I saw him a week or so before his international debut and would never have seen him again. I was very surprised at some stage to discover that Bristol RFC was the home club of John Pullin who played hooker for the English rugby team and even captained it at one stage: I had never seen him play for the club.

And as for music: I remember that sometime in 1968 I bought a mini-guitar that had four strings (it wasn't a ukelele) and tuned it in some strange way. I suddenly started writing songs although they have been lost forever and I have no idea what they might have been about. I do remember that I was in France⁴ in the spring of 1969 and wrote some form of a song on some odd stringed instrument; I realised afterwards that I had written a copy of 'Eleanor Rigby'.

I learnt my first guitar chords at the summer camp of 1969, along with writing the lyric for a song. This was the true rebirth of my interest in music which grew and grew and no doubt had a negative influence on my performance at school.

Internal links
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[2] 1706
[3] 1722
[4] 239

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Sir Garfield Sobers, RIP

Sir Garfied Sobers - or as he was known in my childhood, Gary Sobers - died yesterday  a few days short of his 90th birthday. and was the consummate cricketer of my childhood. His name was in the record books at the time (the 1960s) for having made the highest score in test cricket, 365 not out, but he was also a fearsome bowler.

Although I must have watched him play for the West Indies on television, I was also privileged to see him play in the flesh in June 1968 when I was a junior member of Gloucestershire CC. I remember the occasion although not the date (Copilot found it instantly, 22–24 June 1968). 

During the match, there had been intermitten showers, and indeed the players had left the pitch during Sobers' innings. When play resumed, Sobers scored 98 runs before getting out. Even though he hadn't made a centurty, he received a standing ovation from the around the ground, and especially in the member's enclosure where I and my friends were. I remember trying to touch him - touch a  cricketing god! - but I don't remember whether I succeeded in doing so. 

As Copilot put it, Sobers’ 98 was described as one of those innings where the number didn’t matter. He dominated the bowling, lifted Nottinghamshire’s innings, and played with that effortless authority that made spectators feel privileged just to be present. A standing ovation for 98 — as if he had reached a hundred — is exactly the kind of reception Sobers inspired. County crowds adored him. They knew they were watching the greatest all‑rounder in the world, and they treated him accordingly.

Two months later, Sobers entered the history books again by being the first player to score six sixes in a single over off six consecutive balls in first-class cricket. 

From the Guardian obituary, I learnt that he captained West Indies in 39 Tests, with a sense of adventure in keeping with the character of someone who loved to gamble at racecourses around the world. All this he did while pursuing rum, women and the sort of hedonistic lifestyle that makes the tales about Botham seem like nursery rhymes (in his autobiography, Sobers dealt candidly with his jousts with the bottle in his early adult life).

Anothing sporting legend of my youth has passed away.

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