FIELD OF NIGHTMARES

Malcolm Nash, the man made famous by Garfield Sobers historic six-sixes assault, revisited the ground where it happened.

As we are in 80^th anniversary mode, it just happens that today (May 9^th) would have been Malcolm Nash’s 80^th birthday (he passed away in 2019.) Despite being a hugely dependable left arm seamer for Glamorgan for 17 seasons, taker of close to 1000 first class wickets and also no mean hitter of big sixes – he was known as ‘Super’ in his team to go with his initials MAN - his 15 minutes of fame were when he suffered the ignominy of being the first bowler in first class history to be hit for six sixes off an over – by Garfield Sobers in August 1968.

I went down to the Swansea ground – now no longer a first class venue – to interview Malcolm on the fiftieth anniversary of that momentous occasion (see video below.) He was remarkably sanguine about it all, reflecting on the fact that it was to going to happen to someone, somewhere, “and it just happened to be me.” He could also have viewed it as serious misfortune that the BBC Wales cameras happened to be there – decades before any county championship matches were streamed - and that the commentator Wilf Wooller hadn’t yet handed back to London as he was supposed to have done. But instead Nash saw it as “important to catch such a moment for posterity.”

He usually bowled left arm medium pace seam, but, partly as Derek Underwood had just famously bowled out the Aussies on a drying pitch at the Oval a few days before, he was experimenting with left arm spin. He had taken four of the Nottinghamshire five wickets to fall on that day before Sobers set about him, intending to get quick runs before a declaration.

Watching the video back, Sobers’ huge backlift, incredible bat speed and gigantic follow through are years ahead of their time, a product – he once told me – of growing up playing tennis ball cricket in the back yard, and having to strike a tennis ball as hard as you possibly could to hit it any distance. Also, as Nash points out, he hits everything off the back foot. There is a hint in Sobers’ method of the way Ben Stokes now assaults the ball in a run chase.

Nash became instantly famous for suffering this fate, being interviewed by the BBC immediately after (“though Sobers got double the fee I did!”) and later appearing on This is Your Life and the Wogan show. He continued to ply his trade for another 17 years, and once hit four sixes off an over himself. But as with many pro cricketers of that era, he did not have a lot to fall back on when he retired and finished up coaching in California and then driving school buses in Florida, before he returned to his native Wales because of a heart condition which eventually took his life.

It was another 17 years after 1968 before the feat was achieved again – by Ravi Shastri – but Nash had of course set in motion a new possibility, a new aspiration in batsmanship, which initially found expression in the John Player Sunday league – launched the following year in 1969 – and in all the shorter formats that followed. It was a transformational moment (and now six sixes in one over have been achieved nine times – in List A, T20 and first class cricket, but never in a Test.)

Even if Nash had melancholic moments after suffering at Sobers’ hands, he made one man happy that day. One Swansea man had been desperate to sell his Morris Minor for £100 but could find no buyers so drove himself to the cricket. Leaving the ground after witnessing Sobers’s historic achievement he noticed the bodywork of his car had been damaged by a stone so it would be even harder to sell. Then he had the bright idea to advertise it as having been slightly damaged by one of Sobers’ six sixes and it sold immediately for £200.

Garfield Sobers features in our discussion of greatest Test batsmen who ever lived in the latest Analyst Inside Cricket podcast