Ragtag royalty: Sir Garfield Sobers’ incredible coaching stint at East Malvern

And, as president, he wanted to drop it for maximum effect. He imagined the gasps that would follow in the committee room.

So he dealt with other items on the agenda at East Malvern Cricket Club and left the appointment of the club’s new senior coach to last.

How was sponsorship going? Had the indoor nets been booked for pre-season training?

Were player numbers looking OK? Was there any news from the association?

Finally it came to Raggatt.

At the previous committee meeting he had volunteered to find a coach. As he drove home that night, he wondered why. He had no experience of doing it and few ideas on where to start.

But soon after he got lucky at the Olympic Park greyhound track. “Very, very lucky,’’ he says now.

A fellow he met at the dogs – and immediately got on well with – had agreed to take the position. And he was one of the greatest names in the game.

Now Raggatt had the signed contract to show his committee. He pushed it forward. It was two pages long and dated August 2, 1981.

One of his committeemen read the name and simply said: “F–k.’’

When Raggatt confirmed it, another member of the committee assumed he was joking.

“Don’t be so bloody stupid, Daryl,’’ he snapped. “The season starts soon, you know.’’

But it was true. There was the signature on the second page. East Malvern’s new, non-playing coach was Sir Garfield Sobers.

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‘At least 100 blokes I had never seen in my life’

Forty years later, Raggatt still has the contract. He keeps it, other paperwork and photographs in a folder marked ‘Garry Sobers’.

He retains, too, a mountain of memories from the time one of cricket’s most iconic figures coached his local club.

Now 80, Raggatt well remembers reaction to the appointment. Garry Sobers coaching East Malvern! Most people were incredulous.

The legendary West Indian all-rounder had two seasons at East Malvern, bringing the club exposure it hadn’t had before and hasn’t had since.

It was affiliated with the Victorian Junior Cricket Association, which was below the Victorian district and sub-district competitions and could make no great claims about the standard of its cricket.

In other words, “Sobie‘’ was worlds away from the crowds that cheered him a decade earlier during the Rest of the World series.

When Sobers turned up to training for the first time, there were so many new players that Raggatt set up a table and chairs on the ground so he could line them up and take their details one by one. Then he sent them over to Sobers, then 45, in the nets.

“It was quite a sight for me as the president. I reckon there were at least 100 blokes there who I had never seen in my life,’’ Raggatt says.

The most accomplished newcomers were drafted into the First XI and all teams were strengthened. The firsts, seconds and thirds won premierships, firing the club to its most successful and memorable season. Four decades on, those involved treasure it.

“It was just such a wonderful time,’’ recalls David Clemons, 73, who opened the bowling for the First XI.

“I’m from Tasmania. I made the northern side in 1977 with a bloke named David Boon. If you’d ever told me I’d play cricket under Garry Sobers one day … well, you just couldn’t imagine it.’’

Fellow bowler Rob Connaughton, 68, was telling an Indian cricket fanatic four years ago that Sobers had once coached him. “You’re making the hairs on my arms stand up,’’ the fellow replied.

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The fine print: ‘No concessions at the bar’

Daryl Raggatt had gone to the Olympic Park greyhounds that winter night in 1981 at the insistence of a friend who worked there. He was a successful businessman. But he was no gambler and had never been to the track.

“I was single at the time – my first marriage was gone and my second was far away – so I’d run out of excuses not to go,’’ he says.

His friend ushered him through to the VIP room, saw Sobers and led Raggatt over to meet him. They hit it off straight away, backing a few winners, and at the end of the night they agreed to catch up for lunch.

It was at a second long lunch washed down by some good wine that Raggatt, with no other candidates in mind, “put the hard word’’ on Sobers to coach East Malvern.

“Yes, I’ll do it,’’ he replied. Sobers had married a Melbourne woman, Pru Kirby, was living at Mt Waverley, had played district cricket for North Melbourne the previous season and, as Raggatt saw it, was at a loose end.

At lunch the president scratched out a couple of points on a beer coaster. He presented Sobers with a more formal offer a few days later. Raggatt was “absolutely elated’’ when he signed.

So were the players when they were told about it. John Russell, who laughingly describes himself as a “good No.7’’ who neither batted nor bowled, says some remained unconvinced long after the deal was done.

“Daryl told the story about being at the greyhounds and how they had a yak at the bar,’’ says Russell, 66.

“To be honest, some of us were a bit dubious and we thought, ‘Will he actually turn up to training?’ But he did the first night. Amazing.’’

Word of the recruiting coup spread quickly. Raggatt took calls from the major newspapers the day after the committee ratified the appointment. Reporters attended the first indoor training session at Mt Waverley.

“Sobers goes to bat for the unheralded,’’ headlined Patrick Smith’s back-page report in The Age, which carried a photo of Sobers and Second XI captain Brendon Thomas.

“For the man who knows the Queen, is friends with heads of government, is the greatest all-rounder in Test history and has been knighted for his services to cricket, it is fair to assume he can get whatever coaching position he wants,’’ Smith began.

“It is nothing short of staggering, then, to learn that Sir Garfield Sobers has accepted the job as coach of the rather humble club East Malvern, which does battle in the equally humble Victorian Junior Cricket Association, whose ranks range from skilled 40-year-olds who used to play district cricket to teenagers aspiring to be the Sobers of the 1980s.’’

Raggatt remembers many people asking why Sobers wasn’t coaching Victoria or even Australia. He thought it a reasonable question.

“But I said to them, ‘Stuff Victoria and stuff Australia, I’m only concerned about East Malvern – and he’s ours’,’’ Raggatt says.

Sobers might have known the Queen but no king’s ransom was paid for him to coach East Malvern. Raggatt doesn’t want to disclose how much Sobers was paid, believing it was a private affair between the club and the coach. But he looks back 40 years later and says it was a “very modest stipend for a guy of his calibre’’.

The contract included a clause that “no concessions will apply at the bar’’. Raggatt maintains it was a good move given Sobers liked to put liquor to his lips – rum and coke, usually – after training nights and matches. He was often among the last to leave the bar.

‘I got him’: Net sessions with all-round royalty

East Malvern enjoyed stunning success under Sobers in 1981-82. The firsts lost one game for the season and won the premiership. The seconds and thirds sailed through undefeated.

By the measurement of batsmen making runs, bowlers taking wickets and fielders holding catches, Raggatt thought he was an excellent coach.

Sobers took his position seriously, rarely missing a training session or match and giving straight-to-the-point advice to the players. Bowlers were shown different grips of the ball and told where to bowl. Batsmen were encouraged to play straight and sensibly, and to run hard between the wickets. And there was a focus on fielding.

“He wasn’t a coach by title only. He attended training and he actually did coach,” says Thomas, now 70. “He was committed to the players. I was very impressed by that.’’

Connaughton was one of the many players who joined East Malvern because of Sobers after reading about his appointment in the local paper. He has a vivid memory of a fielding exercise in which Sobers, with a late flick of the wrists, hit catches either side of him, the power enough to leave hands stinging and swollen. Connaughton has never forgotten the sight of Sobers twirling his bat and cracking those catches. He could do it by rotation, no matter where the ball was thrown. Connaughton thought he was a genius.

Ian McFeeters, now 87, was a legend of East Malvern. A leg-spinner with a fiery disposition, he played in 11 First XI premierships and won 38 bowling averages over his career, three of them in the Second XI at District club Prahran. He was 62 when he retired from A-grade cricket, having spent years telling the umpires he only appealed when the batsman was out.

East Malvern teams dismissed for 100 still thought they could win matches; they banked on McFeeters taking five wickets. Preferring a crisis to a cakewalk, he invariably did. The spinner was closer to 50 than 40 when Sobers coached East Malvern but the West Indian showed him another way to bowl the wrong’un.

McFeeters did have a googly, but as he bowled it he turned his shoulder, a giveaway to batsmen. Sobers got him to change his grip of the ball. It took many hours of practice, but McFeeters mastered it and the old spinner had a new weapon.

“It actually won us a premiership,’’ he says, referring to the grand final against Hampton in 1981-82. “We weren’t doing so well. We hadn’t scored enough runs in our first innings and their top batsman was on top of us. I bowled the wrong’un beautifully and it took his middle and leg stumps. Clean bowled him. We were on our way.’’

East Malvern had made only 165. Hampton was 0-98 in its reply but collapsed to be all out for 136, McFeeters grabbing 5-32.

His ankles and hips feeling the strain of so many years of big cricket, Sobers rarely picked up a bat or ball at East Malvern. But one night he shuffled into the net to face McFeeters, who caught the edge of his bat. The spinner thought first slip would have gobbled it. He was exultant.

“It was a special ball I saved for the left-handers, like an off-cutter, and I got him with it,’’ McFeeters says. “It was a lay down misere.’’

Sobers responded by taking the pads off, walking to the back of the nets and studying the spinner. Then he watched him from behind. Sobers put the pads back on with the words, “You’re not going to get me that way again!’’

“True story. Terrific experience, that one,’’ McFeeters says.

“He was a fantastic bloke, great company. I had racehorses in those days and he was a mad racehorse man. We got on like a house on fire.’’

When East Malvern staged a testimonial for McFeeters at the Malvern Town Hall, Sobers rang in from Barbados. He apparently remarked one night at the club that he would have liked to coach the leggie 20 years earlier; believing he could have been a first-class cricketer.

‘My bald little mate from Australia’

Sobers watched East Malvern’s matches from his car as he listened to the races on the radio. Yes, he liked a bet, phoning through his selections for the Sandown dogs on Thursday nights. And, yes, he liked a drink.

Russell remembers a few late nights at the club turning into early mornings, especially after the great fast bowler Wes Hall had arranged for a case of Coruba Rum to be dropped into the East Malvern ground on Malvern Rd.

He says Sobers was a natural storyteller, never told the same yarn twice and brought no malice to any conversation.

“Can’t speak highly enough of him,’’ Russell says. “A funny, humble, courteous, loving sort of guy, just a brilliant bloke. He enjoyed being at the club. It was his relaxation.

“Cricket-wise, he was good, helped us a lot. We were scrubbers, ordinary blokes trying to play cricket, and he was never, ever critical or a smart alec, nothing like that. Best player since Bradman and that’s how he was, an amazing person, never superior in any way at all.’’

Russell has no memory of McFeeters getting a snick from the bat of Sobers, but accepts it as fact. McFeeters, he says, wasn’t a man to tell a fib. Russell can recall Sobers having a hit one night and getting his head so far over the ball it was as if he was trying to smell it.

“Totally correct – feet, eyes, everything in the right position,’’ he says. “One big stride down the pitch and perfect. And you know what? I don’t think he was wearing pads.’’

Russell stood to the left of Sobers in the premiership photo. He calls it “my claim to fame for my entire life’’.

Connaughton says he bowled to Sobers once and never went close to getting a ball past his bat. He says the great all-rounder “basically hit the ball wherever he wanted’’, working his wondrous wrists. He also faced a few spinners from Sobers “and he made me look silly’’.

East Malvern won the First XI premiership in Sobers’ second season as coach. He relocated to Sydney soon after but East made it three flags on the hop in 1983-84.

“After he left the weight of what he’d put in place carried us forward,’’ Raggatt says. “It really was a great time to be around the place.’’

When he met Sobers at the greyhounds, Raggatt gained not only a senior coach for East Malvern but a friend for life. The men call each other on their birthdays and over the years have caught up at a few Test matches.

When Raggatt flew to Barbados for a Test, he was treated like royalty, with Sobers inviting him to lunch with various VIPs and during a speech welcoming “my bald little mate from Australia’’.

“Every few years we manage to catch up somewhere in the world,’’ Raggatt says.

Wherever they are, the conversation invariably turns to Melbourne in 1981-82, when cricket’s greatest all-rounder coached a humble suburban club.