The Nottingham Evening Post photographer had lost patience and headed off for another assignment by the time Garry Sobers turned up at a village cricket ground in  1972, in a silver suit, cream shirt, dark tie and black shoes, for an event which, in retrospect, seems almost beyond belief.

A few months earlier, Sobers had smashed one of his most legendary innings – 254 for the Rest of the World against at the MCG, declared by Sir Donald Bradman to have been the greatest ever batting performance on Australian soil. Yet on that lumpy village pitch in his adoptive English county, Sobers was a circus act, preparing to bat against any locals who wanted to have a ‘go’ at him, as the advertisements put it.

Sobers walked straight onto a freshly marked crease in that suit – no gloves, pads or even a box – took a bat someone passed to him and proceeded to face up to the all-comers, mostly miners, who ran in at him. In 20 minutes or so, he dead-batted no more than six balls and navigated every boundary in a way which prevented injury to the spectators. There was no sightscreen. Only the pale brick of the vicarage wall.

The scene is described by Duncan Hamilton in his excellent new biography of Sir Garfield Sobers, which captures the effortless genius of the West Indian who died 11 days short of his 90th birthday, yet also the deep and residual struggles he contended with. Behind the Test average of nearly 58 and 235 wickets lay a life which was so often about making ends meet, amid demons which included personal tragedy, gambling, drink and fame’s searing spotlight.

Sobers’ love of England brought him to the Lancashire leagues, at a time when England’s arrogant cricket authorities insisted that any overseas player must reside in England for three years before playing for a county. And then Norton, a club with views across the slag heaps of the Staffordshire coalfields.

Even when the game’s blazers relented and Sobers signed for Nottinghamshire on a salary of £5,000 plus car and accommodation, he would play in televised games for the International Cavaliers to keep the money coming in. He was recruited by South Australia because a car dealership and the Adelaide Advertiser stumped up the salary.

Gary Sobers hits out during a knock for the International Cavaliers against Yorkshire in 1967. The West Indian would play to keep the money coming in

Sobers rings the Lord’s bell in 2016. The wonderful West Indian all-rounder passed away last week

Today, Sobers would be a franchise cricket multi-millionaire. But between 1953 and 1968 his salary totalled £40,000 – a fraction of the figure commanded by some relatively ordinary British footballers – and from 1967 to 1969, he appeared no fewer than 124 times for myriad clubs, invitation teams and international XIs. ‘He slept little. He ate very little,’ Hamilton writes. ‘He felt as though parts of him were a decade older than the rest of his body.’

The book details how another of Sobers’ legendary achievements – the ‘six sixes’ over against Glamorgan’s Malcolm Nash at Swansea in 1969 came on an afternoon when he’d disappeared off to the bookies. Notts were cruising and he’d no expectation of being required to bat.

What ensued – an act of frustration with his teammates’ fecklessness, as much as anything else – remains one of Sobers’ most watched feats, because a BBC cameraman in Swansea kept his equipment rolling, ignoring instructions from a Grandstand producer to close down coverage as an episode of Doctor Who was planned.

And though the feat travelled around the world – even featuring in the New York Times – Sobers ended up frustrated that it was a stunt which he could go nowhere without being asked about.

The truly significant international achievements continued, even when the memory of the death of Sobers’ close friend Collie Smith began to recede. Sobers had been at the wheel of the Ford Prefect in which they were travelling to a charity game in Surrey when the vehicle left the A34 in Staffordshire, in 1959. An inquest ruled Smith’s death accidental but a magistrates’ court found Sobers guilty of failing to take a bend in the road properly and it was nearly seven years before he stopped blaming himself.

During one Test at Trent Bridge, the bowling was so undemanding that the left-handed Sobers set himself the challenge of hitting ‘around the clockface’, starting with a late cut at one o’clock. He made 153 in 160 minutes.    

But the West Indies captaincy wore him down to a point where he sought escape in drink or gambling or golf. Before a West Indies tour match against Western Australia at Perth, he went AWOL and, on his own later admission, ‘night seeped into dawn’ before he showed up at the team hotel, minutes before the team were about to leave for the ground. 

Sobers hits out a Rest of the World XI who took on England in 1968 

England players pay their respect to Sobers at Lord’s on Sunday before their ODI against India

He padded up, went to sleep and when it was his turn to bat, he was awoken and headed straight out to the crease. He hit 132 in 133 minutes, returned to the dressing room and fell back asleep.

The half-hour BBC documentary A Genius… but a Human Being – which he agreed to be interviewed for because the fee was £350 in the early ‘70s – hinted at the struggles. ‘Every time I look up to the window, I hope it’s raining because it gives me a rest,‘ Sobers tells the documentary’s makers. ‘It seems a burden to carry all this publicity about being the greatest all-rounder in the world. Every time you walk onto the field, people are expecting miracles.’ 

Hamilton observes that this searing film provoked no TV review or news story. For all the struggles, Hamilton’s book still captures the extraordinary light that burned in Sobers’ cricket. Dennis Lillee, who bore the brunt of Sobers’ stellar 254, was spellbound by what was being inflicted upon himself.

‘He played almost every stroke you can imagine and some you wouldn’t dare imagine,’ Lillee reflected years later. ‘There was nowhere – repeat, nowhere – you could bowl to contain the man.’

The Man Who Walked out of the Sun: A Lifetime of Summers with Garry Sobers, by Duncan Hamilton (Abacus Books) £25