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Throughout this summer of cricket and beyond, Balanced Sports and World Cricket Watch are inviting cricket writers from around the globe to wax lyrical on who they consider their “favourite cricketer”. Today JLaw, who writes at the superb Wicket Maiden, chooses a cricketer not short on talent and controversy – Herschelle Gibbs. He tweets @JustinLawrence.

It was only in 2010 – when I finished reading Herschelle Gibbs’s biography To the Point – that I noticed the shape of a bottle of Jack Daniels was remarkably similar to that of a cricket bat.

During the heyday of his career, my favourite cricketer, Herschelle Gibbs, was equally talented when it came to holding either object. These days – at the tender age of 37 – it’s just the willow which is still being yielded by this highly talented sportsman.

My appreciation for Gibbs goes back to my junior school days in the early nineties when he was perceived as a near demi-god at our school. He was a gifted sportsman with provincial and national colours in rugby, football and cricket – all before his grade 12 year. Despite having well below average academic results, Gibbs was the admiration for all the youngsters at school as he was already playing for the senior Western Province side shortly after his 16^th birthday and was always destined for big things.

For me, Gibbs’s provincial debut in the 1989/90 season was less memorable for his performance with the bat, but rather for the fact that his call up was so unexpected that his name could not be printed on his shirt correctly in time for the match.

In those days, each individual letter of the player’s names were ironed on the shirt. I assume that the backroom staff had run out of letters that day as a freckled teenage Herschelle walked on the field with the word ‘Dibb’ printed on his back. Sometimes it’s tough being the junior in the side.

Despite failing to, uhm, stamp his name on that match, Gibbs went on to become one of the most successful batsmen in South African history, albeit with a lingering flavour of controversy.

But it is his off-field antics which have kept me equally entertained as his antics on the field.

He had to wait until November 1996 to make his Test debut. It was an even longer wait as he was set to come in at number three against India at Eden Gardens, but a remarkable 236-run opening stand between Andrew Hudson (now South Africa selector) and Gary Kirsten (now South Africa coach) meant it was a nervous and elongated wait for Gibbs who eventually got in and made a cautious 31 off 112 balls.

I believe the period in which Gibbs really vindicated his continued selection in the South African national side came in 1999. In January that year he hit his maiden ODI ton against West Indies in Port Elizabeth and three months later, Gibbs smashed a sterling 211 not out in New Zealand – his first of two career double tons in the longer format of the game. The other came in 2003 when he made 228 against Pakistan at his beloved Newlands.

Then who could ever forget what was arguably Gibbs’s finest moment in a Proteas shirt – the 438 game.

A match that will live in the records for years to come as the best ODI ever played took place in Johannesburg on 12 March 2006 and Gibbs was the star of the moment. After Australia scored a then world record of 434/4 in 50 overs, South Africa did the improbable by scoring 438/9 with Gibbs entertaining the crowd in a knock of 175 of 111 balls including seven sixes and 21 boundaries.

After the match Gibbs was quoted as saying in The Guardian: “I don’t know where that innings came from. I don’t think I’ve played better.” It was later revealed in To the Point that Gibbs had broken team protocol the night before and went on an all night drinking bender before taking to the field with a hope of sobering up.

Gibbs later said he was very thankful South Africa lost the toss and were put in the field as it gave him a chance to avoid facing both the new ball and his coach Mickey Arthur.

It’s because of Gibbs’s ability in this case to drink hard and play hard that I am able to call him my favourite cricketer – and make the parallel between the holding of the bat and the holding of a bottle of Jack Daniels.

1999 was, however, also the year when Gibbs had his best chance to win a World Cup were it not for his infamous ‘You just dropped the World Cup’ moment when he ‘dropped’ Australia captain Steve Waugh who went on to score a century and force a win against South Africa.

But, for as much excellence as there was on the pitch, there was a controversial side to the career of Gibbs, perhaps going back to a 2001 tour to the West Indies when he was part of a group of Proteas cricketers who were caught smoking marijuana in a hotel room in Antigua.

To the Point Autobiography

There is of course the match-fixing cloud which will always hover over Gibbs’s career. Having admitted his involvement in the Hansie Cronje-led match-fixing scandal, Gibbs was banned from cricket for six months and could not tour India for six years due to a self-imposed banishment to avoid Indian police.

Adding to that, a few racist remarks in a 2007 Test against Pakistan, some scandalous affairs, drunk driving charges and at least one stint of rehab for alcohol abuse that we know of kept the name Herschelle Gibbs in the media.

While it’s been over two decades of ups and downs, Gibbs, in the twilight of his career, continues to be both a fear for opposition bowlers and a threat to opposition batsmen when he’s lurking at backward point.

Despite a name fail in his First Class debut, the name Herschelle Gibbs now will never be forgotten by cricket fans worldwide. – Justin Lawrence

Previous Favourite Cricketers

Brian Lara by David Siddall

Allan Border by Ben Roberts

Douglas Jardine by David Green

Curtly Ambrose by Matthew Wood

Sachin Tendulkar by Subash Jayaraman

Ian Botham by Jonathan Kilroy

Shane Warne by Murray Middleton

Rahul Dravid by Sujith Krishnan

Wasim Akram by Blaise Murphet

Glenn McGrath by Gary Naylor

Ed Giddins by Nick Harrison

Adam Gilchrist by Will Atkins

Angus Fraser by James Marsh

Paul Allott by Jonathan Howcroft

Tim Bresnan by Yorkshire Len

Sourav Ganguly by Christopher David

David Boon by Jimi Stephens

49.5 overs South Africa 438 for 9 (Gibbs 175, Smith 90, Boucher 50*) beat Australia 434 for 4 (Ponting 164, Hussey 81, Katich 79) by one wicket in the 5th ODI, Johannesburg in 2006

scenes from greatest ever match

Scoring 6 consecutive sixes is an impressive and rare achievement in any form of cricket. When Yuvraj Singh smashedStuart Broad to all corners of the park and beyond in Kingsmead in the Super Eights of the Twenty20 World Cup, he became only the fourth batsman in the history of the game to register 36 runs in an over, following in the footsteps of Gary Sobers, Ravi Shastri and Herschelle Gibbs. Sobers and Shastri did it in first class cricket, whilst Gibbs and Yuvraj achieved it in ODIs and Twenty20s respectively.

Whilst comparing achievements from dissimilar eras is always hard – try arguing that Bradman is not the greatest cricketer of all time because he didn’t play in the professional era – in this case one of the feats excites and exceeds the others in its sheer class and graceful strokeplay.

Garfield Sobers – 6 Sixes in an over for Nottinghamshire vs Glamorgan , 1968 Swansea

Sobers, the then captain of Nottinghamshire, became the first ever batsman to hit six sixes in a single over of six consecutive balls in first-class cricket. Five of the sixes were beautifully clean strikes with a the full swing of the bat, but the record itself was only achieved with an enormous stroke of luck. Having hit four consecutive fours he got under a lofted drive that only made it past the ropes by some schoolboy fielding from Roger Davis palming it over the bar for 6.

The unlucky victim of his unchecked aggression was slow left arm bowler Malcolm Nash. At first glance from the video the bowling of Nash looks somewhat tame. But Sobers feat should not be devalued especially when you consider Nash’s impressive first class record – just under 1000 first class victims at a shade over an average of 25.

Herschelle Gibbs Slogs 6 Sixes in an over for South Africa vs the Netherlands, World Cup ODI, Warner Park, 2007

Elegance, gracefullness, cultivated are three words that I would often associate with Herschelle Gibb’s batting. On this occasion they could not be less fitting as Gibbs bludgeons the unfortunate Dan van Bunge in agricultural fashion for 6 consecutive sixes. The Netherlands show their faces every four years on the world cricket scene and Gibbs could not have highlighted their status as perennial whipping boys any better.

Ravi Shastri – 6 Sixes in an over for Bombay vs Baroda 1985

Video footage of this momentous Gary Sobers equalling achievement has been very hard to come by. The unfortunate bowler in this case was left arm spinner Tilak Raj and Shastri went on to score 200 not out the process.

(NOTE: listen very carefully to the commentary of Yuvraj’s footage and Ravi might get onto this video reel after all )

Yuvraj Singh – 6 Sixes in an over for India vs England in the Twenty20 World Cup, Kingsmead 2007

Yuvraj Singh’s feat overshadows everything that has gone before it in breathtaking fashion. The increasingly notable feature of batsman clearing away their front foot and having a free flowing swing of the blade in the shorter form of the game could not have been more superbly illustrated. Impeccable timing, proper cricket shots and hefty, hefty blows. It could be an advertisement for the modern game.

Spare a thought for Stuart Broad the unfortunate bowler. To be dealt with so savagely at the start of an international career then requires a lot of character to perform once more in the future. A couple of questions have to be asked though which could have changed the course of the events – Why did Flintoff have such heated words with Yuvraj before the over? Why didn’t Broad throw in the short ball if the yorker was misfiring?