CPL to honour Sir Garfield Sobers with minute’s applause

The Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) will pay trib­ute to West In­dies crick­et leg­end Sir Garfield Sobers with a minute's ap­plause be­fore the open­ing match at each tour­na­ment venue this sea­son.

The trib­ute will take place once in every host ter­ri­to­ry as the tour­na­ment moves across the Caribbean, giv­ing fans in each coun­try an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ho­n­our one of the re­gion's great­est sport­ing icons.

CPL or­gan­is­ers said the ges­ture will al­low sup­port­ers to come to­geth­er to cel­e­brate Sobers' con­tri­bu­tion to Caribbean and world crick­et, mark­ing what will be the first pub­lic trib­ute for many fans since his death.

Sobers died at his home in Saint Michael, Bar­ba­dos, on Ju­ly 17 at the age of 89.

Wide­ly re­gard­ed as the great­est all-rounder in crick­et his­to­ry, Sobers en­joyed a 20-year in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer with the West In­dies be­tween 1954 and 1974. In 93 Test match­es, he scored 8,032 runs at an av­er­age of 57.78, in­clud­ing 26 cen­turies, while al­so tak­ing 235 wick­ets.

His un­beat­en 365 against Pak­istan in 1958 re­mained the high­est in­di­vid­ual score in Test crick­et for 36 years. Sobers al­so be­came the first play­er to hit six six­es in a sin­gle over in first-class crick­et when he achieved the feat for Not­ting­hamshire against Glam­or­gan in 1968. He cap­tained the West In­dies from 1965 to 1972.

Re­pub­lic Bank CPL Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Pe­te Rus­sell said Sobers' in­flu­ence ex­tend­ed far be­yond his re­mark­able sta­tis­tics.

"Sir Garfield Sobers did not just play crick­et, he de­fined what was pos­si­ble in the sport. He gave West In­dies crick­et its iden­ti­ty on the world stage and in­spired gen­er­a­tions of play­ers across the re­gion to be­lieve in their own great­ness. It is on­ly fit­ting that every ground we play on this sea­son paus­es to ho­n­our him," Rus­sell said.

CPL said it will stage ad­di­tion­al trib­utes through­out the tour­na­ment to cel­e­brate Sobers' en­dur­ing lega­cy, cul­mi­nat­ing at the tour­na­ment fi­nal, which re­turns to his home ground, Kens­ing­ton Oval, lat­er this year.

Tour­na­ment or­gan­is­ers said fur­ther ini­tia­tives recog­nis­ing Sobers' con­tri­bu­tion to West In­dies and world crick­et will be an­nounced as the sea­son pro­gress­es.