Every so often, a cricket book
passes us by that makes us sit up and take notice and if you want a bit of
intrigue, mystery, shenanigans and chicanery over the festive period, then
there is no need to spend lunch with Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi.
Instead grab a copy of Howzat? The Six Sixes Ball Mystery by Grahame Lloyd and
you won’t go far wrong.
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Lloyd’s journey starts in Swansea
in 1968 when Sir Garfield Sobers slapped Malcolm Nash for six sixes filmed for
Sunday Grandstand, where many of you I am sure, have seen it on grainy black
and white television footage. The immortal words that the ball was “way down to
Swansea” will be live in the memory bank and that famous ball has caused
ructions ever since being sold. The ball disappeared in someone’s make up draw for years
before turning up at an auction in 2006 for £26,400 and ended up in India.
Except there was one problem. It wasn’t the real ball. The ball was spurious.
Or as the Middle Stump readership would say, a load of bollocks.
How do we know? Only one ball was
used in the over and not the three that Christie’s have mentioned at auction.
Malcolm Nash the bowler says so, whilst John Parkin the non striker on that
famous day is adamant that only one ball was used. Glamorgan at the time used
Stuart Surridge balls, yet the one that turned up at auction was a Dukes. Who used Dukes balls at the time? Funnily enough, Nottinghamshire CCC amongst many other counties, but crucially not Glamorgan.
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St Helen's, Swansea...the scene of Sobers' amazing feat |
Lloyd’s painstaking research
includes interviews with Garfield Sobers and his agent, the ex Notts batsman
Basher Hassan, neither of whom come out of this saga in a particularly great
light. Even worse are some of the characters who inhabit the world of cricket
collectables including Ashish Singhal, the Indian current owner of the ball who has basically paid
way over the odds for something he could get for £12.99, albeit not as much as the initial bloke who shelled out £26,400 on a cricket ball. Ashish, sounds like he
has been smoking hashish! Certainly Bonhams agree with Lloyd, as they pulled
the sale of the ball when Singhal, or one of his mysterious cohorts tried to re
sell it last year.
With a foreword by Matthew Engel,
Lloyd is well connected in the cricketing world, even trying to use Wisden
editor Lawrence Booth to courier the cherry back from India, without success
due to the stalling nature of the Indian owners of it. The book has many twists
and turns, and feels in a way like batting in India on a turning track. It is
intriguing and requires concentration with close fielders circling around
Lloyd’s bat trying to stop him, but you feel you are richer for the experience
of reading it.
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Sir Garfield Sobers |
I have no doubts that this book
will do well, and we highly recommend our readership to have a look at
it. I initially had my doubts when first looking at it, potentially thinking it
was ‘heavy going’ but Lloyd’s excellent style of writing and determination to
get to the truth keeps you gripped right through, and it is an intriguing tale.
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