Six of the Best

Author:

By Grahame Lloyd

Format:

Hardback

Availability:

In print, usually dispatched within 3-4 days.

Price:

£14.99

Tagged with:

Cricket, Gary Sobers, Malcolm Nash, St Helen's, Glamorgan CCC, Nottinghamshire CCC

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Further Details

• Published: 29th Aug 2008
• ISBN: 0954596137
• Pages: 224
• Size: 198mm x 126mm

From the Publisher:

As well as the memories of Sobers and bowler Malcolm Nash, Six of the Best: Cricket's Most Famous Over by Grahame Lloyd, features the recollections of the surviving members of the Glamorgan and Nottinghamshire teams who took part in the historic game at St Helen's in Swansea on 31st August 1968.

The book also casts new doubts on the authenticity of the ball sold at auction for £26,400 nearly two years ago and explains how Sobers' amazing achievement came to be recorded by BBC Wales - thanks to a cricket-mad cameraman who asked the director on the day to keep the cameras rolling.

Among those recalling the events of that momentous afternoon are the Nottinghamshire non-striker, John Parkin and Glamorgan fielder Roger Davis who caught the fifth ball of the over before tumbling over the boundary - thus nullifying the catch. But for an experimental change to Law 35 - which stated that "the fieldsman must have no part of his body grounded outside the playing area in the act of making the catch and afterwards" - Sobers would have been out.

This fascinating ball-by-ball account of the five minutes of mayhem also reveals what happened to the players who took part in the game, to the two umpires and to the bat and the ball which was found in a nearby street by schoolboy Richard Lewis.

As well examining the history of big-hitting before Sobers' feat, Six of the Best features the three occasions on which six sixes have been hit off an over since 1968 by Ravi Shastri (1985), Herschelle Gibbs (2007) and Yuvraj Singh (2007).

From the Critics:

“One book on six balls: that is some achievement, not least because the events of that over are familiar to most followers of cricket. Forty years ago Garry Sobers struck Malcolm Nash, then in the early stages of his career with Glamorgan, for 36 runs "all the way to Swansea" as Wilf Wooller put it in his television commentary. This is one of the most celebrated of sporting events, heightened by the fact that the game's greatest ever player brought it off.

So Grahame Lloyd's task was to provide fresh detail and a seasoned perspective. He has done so by talking to everyone still alive who was involved on that late summer's day in 1968. Who, for example, remembers the name of the non-striker and what became of him? John Parkin was longing to be on strike. When he gave up the game, after a modest career, to become a bricklayer he knew that he, like the bowler, would be for ever defined by that over. He recalls Nash muttering to himself: "Where do I bowl the next ball? Do I put it up there or bowl a little quicker?" Don Shepherd, fielding at short third man, is too kind to be critical but even he, in subsequent seasons, would ask Nash amid barroom pleasantry how on earth he allowed himself to be hit for six sixes in succession. Shepherd would have bowled wider of the stumps but Nash's self-belief was such that he believed he could dismiss Sobers off any of those six balls - as indeed he nearly did when Roger Davis dropped a mis-hit drive while tumbling over the boundary. It is fascinating stuff, which poor Nash has put up with for years. But he and Sobers became good friends.”

Ivo Tennant, Wisden Cricketer

“This is much more than a literary reprise of five famous minutes at Swansea. Grahame Lloyd has given us a detailed, illuminating and timely account of the day bowler Malcolm Nash was so memorably savaged. The author has gone to all the surviving players from that match to ask them what they remember. It's an engrossing, well-written record of human interest, with the humour as well as the anguish”

West Country Life

“A fascinating blow-by-blow account...but there is so much more to the book than just the bare facts which makes it a must-read for both avid fans of the game and the casual reader. The author's passion for his subject shines through. This was truly a labour of love”

Nottingham Evening Post

“Cricket enthusiasts everywhere will love it”

Western Mail