FIFTY years ago Radcliffe Cricket Club pulled off one of the biggest sporting smash-and-grabs of all time when they signed a relatively unknown, though promising, young West Indian Test cricketer to be their next professional.

Up to that point his achievements had been fairly modest and his enduring reputation was still to be forged.

But before he stepped foot in the town everyone in the cricketing world knew the name of Garfield St Aubrun Sobers.

For between that late-summer day in 1956 - when Radcliffe's chain-smoking committeeman John Lowe persuaded Sobers to sign on the dotted line for £500 - and the start of the 1958 season, the 20-year-old Barbadian was to make the highest Test match score of all time, 365 not out against Pakistan. Suddenly a signature that had an element of speculative risk about it was looking like a bargain!

I was there at the Racecourse as an eleven-year-old, sitting in short pants in the cheap seats alongside Radcliffe's imposing pavilion, that cool overcast April day when Sobers made his Central Lancashire League debut (a year later than expected because he was picked for the West Indies tour of England in 1957). Like everyone else watching I was in awe of The Great Man. Five years later I was playing alongside him.

My abiding memory of that afternoon is not the familiar languid walk to the wicket, or the graceful athleticism, or even the breathtaking all-round ability on display - which reminded many of an earlier Caribbean club professional Frank Worrell - but of the ball disappearing over my right shoulder and out of the Racecourse ground as an undefeated Sobers plundered 127 runs. He also took seven Milnrow wickets for 21 runs, just for good measure.

In those days there was a lodge at the back of the pavilion, a stinking rectangle of stagnant water which provided a natural barrier, discouraging any intruders from the adjoining council estate. It was filled with old prams, tyres, the odd unwanted cat or dog, and not much else. By teatime that day it had also laid claim to several new, and very expensive, cricket balls. If memory serves me right, within weeks it had been filled in.

Sobers had signed for a year but stayed five, lighting up the league with breathtaking individual performances, such as his 186 against Ashton in less than two hours; 50 in 13 minutes at Rochdale, 8-13 at Werneth and three wickets - all clean bowled - in the first over of a match at Middleton.

He gorged himself on runs, seemingly at will. He bowled extremely fast, a skill he says he learned in his first season at Radcliffe, as well as slow left arm, a bamboozling mixture of orthodox and chinamen. He was an alert catcher close to the wicket and - certainly until injury slowed him - fleet-footed around the field.

I remember one game at the Racecourse when Sobers, bowling slow from the "tennis courts end", was heaved high and handsomely back over his head by a bludgeoning tail-ender. Realising that he had everyone up around the bat, Sobers turned and took chase, catching the spiralling ball just yards from the boundary edge. Sobers made the unbelievable possible.

That first rain-hit summer he scored 1,252 runs and took 88 wickets in a Radcliffe side which under-performed. In fact, Sobers took more wickets than the rest of the team put together and scored almost as many runs as them on his own! His achievements in subsequent seasons were no less remarkable, with the professional's "double" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets achieved in both 1960 and 1961, the year Radcliffe also won the Wood Cup and the league championship.

Gary (he later preferred Garry) Sobers was born on July 28, 1936, in Barbados, the fourth of six children. His merchant seaman father died when Gary was five, his ship torpedoed by a German submarine. The Boy Wonder played his first game for Barbados at 16 and his first Test match, against England, four months short of his 18th birthday.

He went on to score what was then a record 8,032 runs in 93 Tests, with 26 centuries and an average of 57. He also took 235 wickets. He played county cricket for Nottinghamshire, Sheffield Shield cricket for South Australia and in all first-class matches he scored 28, 315 runs, with 86 centuries, 400 catches and more than 1,000 wickets. In 1968, playing for Notts, he became the first man to hit six sixes in one six-ball over from Glamorgan's Malcolm Nash. He was knighted in 1975.

Sobers has fond memories of his five years at Radcliffe, recalling it as a time when he learned how to bowl very fast - and how to bet. He "discovered" horse racing and poker during long, aimless days between matches, and enjoyed a drink with the "locals".

In his autobiography, published in 2002, he describes how he was warned about "Teddy Boys" who carried "flick knives" when he first came to live in Radcliffe lodging at the Boar's Head in the town centre.

"When I walked home at night the teddy boys in their drainpipe trousers, thick-soled shoes, bright shirts and string ties, with greased hair, would wave at me and shout hello.

" I often stopped to ask them what they were doing out on the streets at 11 o'clock and invite them to have a drink at the pub. We would have a few and then they would go home, without any hint of trouble."

Sobers says he was mates with everyone around "the village" - as he described Radcliffe - and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of colour prejudice.

John (Jack) Lowe, who was responsible for bringing Sobers to Radcliffe, later described him as "a colossus" and "four cricketers in one".

Whether he is the best ever remains a subject for eternal argument, but a panel of 200 experts appointed by cricket's "bible", Wisden Almanac, put him a close second to Sir Donald Bradman, and that would be good enough for most people.

Greatest or not, it has always been a matter of tremendous personal pride that I, a modest club cricketer, played in the same team as Garfield Sobers, imperious Test all-rounder. It was July 28, 1962 - coincidentally his birthday. I was 15 and making my debut for Radcliffe at Walsden. And Gary Sobers, world record run-scorer, was wishing me luck as I walked out to bat.

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