Gopeesingh: Sobers the greatest I ever saw

North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh has joined the Caribbean and glob­al sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty in mourn­ing the pass­ing of crick­et leg­end Sir Garfield Sobers, de­scrib­ing him as the great­est all-round crick­eter the world has ever pro­duced.

Gopeesingh, who played crick­et for Trinidad and To­ba­go, said the sport had lost one of on­ly two play­ers who could be men­tioned along­side leg­endary bats­man Sir Don­ald Brad­man, who him­self de­scribed Sobers as “the great­est all-round crick­eter I ever saw.”

He said while Sobers’ sta­tis­tics would for­ev­er pre­serve his great­ness, in­clud­ing his un­beat­en 365 in Test crick­et, more than 8,000 Test runs, 235 wick­ets and his his­toric achieve­ment of hit­ting six six­es in an over, his im­pact ex­tend­ed be­yond num­bers.

“Sir Gar­ry’s true great­ness lay not sim­ply in the records he set, but in the el­e­gance, courage, bril­liance and joy with which he played the game,” Gopeesingh said.

He de­scribed Sobers as a sym­bol of Caribbean ex­cel­lence who in­spired gen­er­a­tions of West In­di­ans to be­lieve they could com­pete with the best in the world.

Gopeesingh re­called watch­ing Sobers play at the Queen’s Park Oval as a young crick­eter and said those per­for­mances in­spired him and count­less oth­ers to em­u­late the leg­endary all-rounder’s bat­ting, field­ing and con­fi­dence.

He said Sobers’ in­flu­ence re­mained with him through­out his own crick­et ca­reer, in­clud­ing his time rep­re­sent­ing Queen’s Park Crick­et Club and lat­er play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for Trinidad and To­ba­go against Aus­tralia in 1978 and for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies com­bined team against New Zealand and Aus­tralia.

Gopeesingh al­so re­flect­ed on meet­ing Sobers per­son­al­ly in 1998 in Guyana and again in 2016 dur­ing Queen’s Park Crick­et Club’s 125th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions.

He said those en­coun­ters re­vealed a man who was “warm, gra­cious, hum­ble and gen­er­ous with his time,” adding that true great­ness was mea­sured not on­ly by records but al­so by char­ac­ter.

“Bar­ba­dos has lost one of its great­est sons. The West In­dies has lost one of its great­est am­bas­sadors. Crick­et has lost one of its great­est mas­ters,” Gopeesingh said.

He added that while Sobers’ in­nings had end­ed, his lega­cy would con­tin­ue to in­spire fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of crick­eters across the Caribbean and be­yond.