BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — Garfield St Auburn Sobers played his final innings at the Kensington Oval here on Wednesday under bright sunshine for nearly three hours, still able to mesmerise local, regional and international spectators, most of whom, including Britain’s King Phillip, acknowledging that there have been few, “whose name alone brings a smile to people’s faces across Barbados, the Caribbean and the entire Commonwealth”.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, in her “grateful from the nation” tribute at the State Service of Thanksgiving, said the visit to the Kensington Oval, “this most iconic of cricket grounds where Sir Garry’s casket was draped with the national flag of Barbados”, was to pay tribute, “but also to send a message to the future”.

She said the 89-year-old Sir Garry did not come to be the best or the first or the last, but “came to do his best and to be his best, not for the world, but for goals that he set himself, conscious that if he did that, along with whatever else everyone else did, that glory could come, victory could be assured”.