WHEN it comes to judging cricketing talent, you don't get much greater an authority than Sir Garfield Sobers.

The legendary West Indian is universally acclaimed as the best all-rounder ever to have played the game.

Cricketing bible Wisden talked of him possessing "every necessary attribute for greatness" when naming him as one of their five Cricketers of the Twentieth Century and, after becoming the first player to hit six sixes in a first-class over, Sobers is assured of his place in the history of the game.

So, when the venerable left-hander talks of Durham's Stephen Harmison becoming "one of the best" you start to understand just how big an impression the Ashington-born pace bowler made in last winter's tour of the Caribbean.

Sobers went into the tour knowing little or nothing about a raw 25-year-old fast bowler striving to answer the critics who suggested he wasn't good enough, or tough enough, to withstand the rigours of the Test game.

He ended it with the firm belief that Harmison could go on to dominate the international game for many years to come.

"It is always difficult to judge a bowler on the first time you see him," said Sobers, who averaged almost 58 in 160 Test innings and claimed 235 wickets with his blend of left-arm orthodox and wrist spin. "But he bowled extremely well.

"He did a magnificent job in the West Indies and did everything that was asked of him. His length, his line, his pace, his bounce - everything looked complete.

"I would say that he looked like a very good bowler in the making. If he continues, he would have to rank as one of the best.

"We'll have to wait to see how he progresses from here onwards. But it was the first time that I had seen him bowl and I was certainly impressed."

Harmison's first Test haul of 7-12 saw him post the best ever bowling figures recorded by an Englishman in more than 70 years of Caribbean tours.

Sobers was a thorn in England's side during many of them, mastering the West Indian wickets for 20 years after making his Test match bow against the tourists in 1953.

The game has changed greatly since he smashed an unbeaten 365 against Pakistan in 1957 to set a world record score that was to last for 36 years before it was bettered by compatriot Brian Lara.

And Sobers feels that Harmison's record haul is worthy of even greater praise, given the advantages that have gradually been ceded to batsmen over the years.

"The bowlers have a more difficult task now," he explained. "It is tougher for them to bowl at the batsmen.

"We had a back foot rule, which meant that bowlers were allowed to drop their front foot two or three feet over the batting crease.

"That meant they were a lot closer to the batsman when they delivered the ball. Today you have the bowler bowling with the front foot rule, so he's always bowling from the maximum 22 yards.

"I remember speaking to Colin Cowdrey when he came back from Australia in 1954 after having played a game against Gordon Rowe.

"Colin was saying to me that if he had played forward then Gordon's front foot would have landed on his.

"I saw Gordon very late in his career and his action ended in a tremendous drive forwards.

"His front foot used to go way past the batting crease before he had delivered the ball, and that meant he was bowling from somewhere like 16 or 18 yards.

"It must be much more difficult for a batsman to play against that than if the bowler is bowling from a full 22 yards."

The thought of having to face Harmison from nearly halfway down the pitch underlines just how great a technician Sobers had to be to survive in an era furnished with fast bowling greats such as Fred Trueman and Brian Statham.

The Barbadian plundered 8,032 runs in 93 Tests for the West Indies, smashing 26 centuries and scoring over 500 runs in a Test series on six separate occasions.

But it was the manner of his batting that raised him to legendary status, with his elegance and power combining to produce a blend of natural shot-making that instantly caught the eye.

He could tame the best, no matter how hard the opposition attack tried to unsettle him.

"There are so many things that have changed over the years," said Sobers. "And that makes it very difficult to compare batsmen of this period to batsmen of the past.

"You can only bowl two bouncers in an over - I can remember facing five or six at a time.

"The batsmen have helmets, they have arm pads and chest pads, and they're protected now. I didn't play with anything like that."

While many former West Indian cricketers are now charged with running the game, Sobers prefers to take a back seat away from the limelight.

He throws himself into charity work, such as last night's dinner for cerebral palsy charity CP Sport, but still enjoys settling back to watch the game in his homeland.

And, while some are predicting that this winter's defeat to England could herald the slow death of cricket in the Caribbean, he is confident that the region will rise again.

Youngsters might be tempted by the lure of football or basketball, but Sobers is adamant that cricket will always have a special place in West Indian hearts.

"At the present moment, there is more cricket being played in the Caribbean than there ever was," said Sobers. "Even when I was playing.

"I live in the Caribbean and I haven't seen the competition between basketball, football and cricket that everybody seems to talk about.

"Some people are trying to say this is why our cricket has deteriorated in the way that it has but I think that is absolute nonsense."

Last winter's tour certainly seemed to suggest that West Indian cricket was on a downward slope. But, after listening to Sobers, maybe the cause wasn't something entrenched in the region's changing social fabric.

Perhaps it was more to do with the emergence of an English great.