Kuala Lampur, July 18 -- There are some people who become so woven into a sport that you quietly begin to believe they will always be there.

Sir Garfield Sobers was one of them.

He wasn't simply one of cricket's immortals. He was cricket's measure of greatness. Every all-rounder who followed was introduced as "the next Sobers." None ever were.

Today, as the cricketing world says goodbye to the greatest player many of us have ever known, I find myself thinking less about the records than about the little boy who should never have made it this far.

Long before the knighthood.

Long before the six sixes.

Long before the statue outside Kensington Oval.

There was Bay Land, a working-class neighbourhood in Barbados, and a five-year-old bo...