Regarded by many as the greatest all-rounder to have played the game, Garfield Sobers was a complete cricketer. Equally adept at bowling seam or spin as he was with bat in hand, Sobers was a three-dimensional phenomenon lightyears ahead of his time.

Sobers came into the West Indies Test team as a 17-year old in 1954 against England. Initially picked for his spin-bowling ability, Sobers batted down the order at number nine and, perhaps surprisingly, had to wait four years and 29 innings for his first Test century. It’s fair to say he made up for lost time when he finally reached three figures, smashing a world record 365* against Pakistan at Sabina Park in Jamaica.

It was a record that would not be beaten until Brian Lara made 375 against the same opposition 36 years later and was the first of 26 Test centuries that Sobers would make in a 20-year career. He had a tendency to go big with the bat; 11 of those 26 hundreds were scores of 150 or more and his average of 57.78 puts him eleventh in the all-time list of batsmen to have batted 20 innings or more.

Later in his career, Sobers made headlines at domestic level when, in a 1968 County Championship match for Nottinghamshire against Glamorgan, he became the first batsman in a first-class match to score six sixes in an over. Tony Lewis, the Glamorgan captain at the time, observed that Sobers achieved the feat ‘not through sheer slogging, but scientific hitting with every movement working in harmony’.

With the ball, Sobers was an all-rounder in the truest sense thanks to his ability to switch between both finger spin and wrist spin, as well as being able to bowl left-arm fast-medium. Originally a left-arm orthodox bowler, Sobers developed the ability to bowl googlies and wrist spin while, when bowling quickly, he was known for his ability to swing the new ball. His 235 wickets rank him seventh in West Indies’ all-time leading wicket takers with only Lance Gibbs ahead of him in terms of spinners.

Sobers was knighted in 1975 for his services to cricket, a year after calling time on an astonishingly successful 20-year Test career. He ushered in an era of dominance for West Indies cricket as countless greats followed him and carried on his mantle, but there has not yet been another cricketer able to boast anything like the all-round talents that Sobers displayed. In truth, there probably never will be.