Malcolm Nash

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.
John Arlott, WCM, 1984