THINK of what Bob Marley did for the Caribbean in the 1970s. And if you do, put Gary Sobers in the identical frame. It is difficult to make the comparison because Marley penetrated the globe. Sobers was a cricketer and the most powerful countries in the world back then did know what cricket was.

In terms of the cricketing world, Sobers was a genius. He made the parts of the world that played cricket look up to the Caribbean. I never knew Sobers, never spoke to him. He was a Caribbean giant when I was a little boy. But I watched him in person at GCC many times and one day he gave me 25 cents.

My father was the groundsman at the Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC) where test cricket was played. One day, my father was talking to him (I guess captains speak all the time to the chief groundsman about preparation of the pitch) and I came up with my scrawny looking self asking my father for food. Sobers went into his pocket and gave me 25 cents.

All my siblings were ecstatic that Sobers gave me 25 cents. There are two things I kept from age 10 throughout my adult life. One was a green water gun I got for Christmas from my mother. I never got another one and the 25 cents Sobers gave me. I put both up on the window sledge of my parents’ bedroom. I was in Canada studying when I received the news that our house fell down to the ground. Had I been in Guyana, I would have looked for my gun and the Sobers memento.

You had to belong to that age to see how iconic Sobers was in the West Indies. In the Caribbean at that time (the entire 1960s), Sobers was more popular than any Caribbean Prime Minister and the Might Sparrow from Trinidad. One reason explains this – the man was a cricketing genius.

Sobers was a master batsman, a spin bowler and a medium pacer. Those three dimensions, no one has successfully emulated in cricket up to this day.

Each time I saw him at GCC I would stare at him. Every Caribbean youth stared at Sobers. He was the Caribbean and the Caribbean was Sobers. Each time I saw him at GCC, his shirt collar was always up. In those days, only “sweet boys” wore their shirt collar like that.

Indeed, he was a lady’s man, but I don’t think the West Indies Cricket Board in those days could have given a thought to discipline Sobers. The very idea of disciplining Sobers would never occur to any cricket administrator. To better understand who Sobers was in those days, think of Messi breaking curfew rules. Which Argentine football official would dare suggest that Messi be disciplined? That was how tall Sobers stood in the Caribbean.

Unfortunately, I did not read his autobiography. It was published at a time when my life was consumed by politics. But given his larger-than-life stature, I should have read it. I felt sad when I heard the news that he passed away yesterday (Friday). People do not live forever but Gary Sobers dominated the Caribbean when I was growing up so the Sobers phenomenon is part of my growing up era. And of course, I saw him so many times at my father’s work place. So, you wish someone like that would live forever

I had already completed my piece for today’s edition when I heard he had died. Immediately, I replaced the column and began writing this one. There are things a columnist must do. If you don’t, then your columnist career will never be complete. Here are those things. You have to write on Nelson Mandela. He was one of civilisation’s unique humans.

You had to write on Michael Jackson when you heard that he had passed away. Jackson was a deeply troubled human but he took the world by storm and it will be hard to have another one like him in a life time. A columnist must have written about Mikhail Gorbachev when he died.  He was perhaps the greatest human in history when it came to and when it comes to the resistance to the temptation of power. We will not see a Gorbachev for generations to come.

You cannot be a successful Caribbean columnist if you do not write about Sir Gary Sobers. He was simply too great not to comment on. I guess, Barbados is soon to have its biggest funeral service in its colonial and post-colonial history when Sir Gary is laid to rest. Heads of CARICOM governments will be there. They must because he was the Caribbean and the Caribbean was him.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.