Former Glamorgan captain Malcolm Nash, best known for being slammed for six sixes in an over by Garry Sobers, has died at the age of 74.
Reports suggested that Nash had collapsed while attending a sports dinner in London on Tuesday night, and died in hospital overnight.
Nash played 17 seasons of first-class cricket, from 1966 to 1983, turning out in 336 matches in which he picked up 993 wickets at an average of 25.87 with his left-arm medium-pace bowling. He scored 7129 runs in 469 innings with two centuries and 25 half-centuries. He also played 271 List A matches between 1967 and 1985, picking up 324 wickets at 21.27.
ALSO READ: The other side of 36
A note in the Wisden Cricket Monthly following Nash’s retirement from first-class cricket wrote: “Malcolm Nash was pre-eminently a highly skilful manipulator of medium-pace seam bowling. A thoughtful and sensitive cricketer, he, too, helped out as captain for a couple of difficult seasons, though from a sense of duty rather than real enthusiasm for the post. It appealed to his astute cricket brain but not to his essentially amiable personality. He was never a bowler to settle for the slavishly defensive; but sought to attack and to outwit opposing batsmen. He is, as he ruefully accepts, best known for being hit for six sixes in a six-ball over by Garfield Sobers in 1968; and secondly for five sixes and a four, by Frank Hayes of Lancashire. It is less often remembered that he himself once hit four consecutive balls from Dennis Breakwell of Somerset for six. He also set what was then a club record of nine sixes in a championship innings, against Gloucestershire at Swansea in 1973. Those memories were some balm for him. In 17 seasons he scored 7129 runs and held 148 catches but, most important, he took 993 wickets without, however, taking a hundred in any season.”
Nash was the first bowler to concede six sixes in an over in representative cricket. In 1968, Nottighamshire were in Swansea to face Glamorgan and Nash, then 23 and primarily a seam bowler, tried his hand at left-arm spin to Sobers but it didn’t turn out the way he would have liked.
Interestingly, as with most other things in Nash’s impressive career, it has been largely forgotten that he had picked up four of the five wickets to fall in that Nottinghamshire innings before the Sobers carnage.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo