Scott Oliver looks back on when the player commonly recognised as the greatest all-rounder ever to play the game mixed it in club cricket

Norton chairman Tommy Talbot would have contemplated Sobers’ five-year stint at Radcliffe – 5,708 runs at 63.42, 532 wickets at 11.23 – and no doubt reckoned he was on terra firma offering a five-year deal at £50 per week. The bona fides stacked up. Very probably, the man with the highest score in Test cricket would do them a job.
Even so, the newly signed Sobers was unable to play that maiden NSSCL season as he was busy touring England with the West Ind...