In the past a six was a rarity – especially in Test matches. Don Bradman hit only six sixes in 52 Tests.
When 19 year-old Neil Harvey respectfully asked Sir Don as to why he was getting out during the 1948 tour of England, his advice to the teenager was: keep the ball on the ground and not lift them for sixes.
With the arrival of ODIs and especially T20s, sixes became more common. In fact they are the main reason spectators flock to those matches.
A six takes you right into the game, breaking barriers between players and spectators. It was always a thing of beauty and joy forever but T20 six-athons – especially IPL and BBL – have made it sexier than Marilyn Monroe.
With the ICC World T20 due to commence soon, I was inspired to do this story.
How many batsmen have hit six sixes in an over?
No one at Test level, but it has happened twice in first-class matches, once in an ODI and once in a T20 International.
India’s Yuvraj Singh is the only batsman to hit six sixes in an over in a T20 International. That was for India against England in the 2007 World T20 in Durban. And the bowler he smashed for six sixes was the accurate fast bowler Stuart Broad.
In all Yuvraj scored 58 off 16 balls hitting 7 sixes and 3 fours as India won by 18 runs. India went on to lift the Cup a week later by defeating Pakistan by five runs.
South Africa’s Herschelle Gibbs is the only one to hit six sixes in an over in an ODI. This was in the 2007 World Cup match against Netherland at Basseterre, St Kitts in West Indies on 16 March. The bowler to suffer this torture was DLS van Bunge.
Gibbs became the first cricketer to hit six sixes in an over in an international match. This was six months before Yuvraj’s sixes spree in Durban.
Now to first-class cricket and Sir Garry Sobers, universally acclaimed as the greatest all-rounder ever. The West Indian legend became the first cricketer to hit six sixes in an over in a first-class match.
That was way back on 31 August 1968 for Nottingham against Glamorgan in Swansea, England, when he sent bowler Malcolm Nash flying over the boundary line six times in six deliveries.
Sobers hit the first four balls for sixes but was “caught” by Roger Davis in the deep and Sobers started walking back to the pavilion. But the umpire called him back.
The impact forced fielder Davis to fall back to beyond the boundary line. The crowd chanted, “six, six” and umpire John Langridge signalled a six.
Sobers returned and hit the sixth delivery over the wall and into a road outside. It was huge!
This inspired English author Grahame Lloyd to write Howzat? – The Six Sixes Ball Mystery (2013) on whether the ball auctioned by Christie’s in London for £26,500 in 2006 was the ball Sobers had hit for those sixes. It was not.
Seventeen years after Sobers’ sixes India’s Ravi Shastri repeated this feat, for Mumbai against Baroda at home on 10 January 1985. In all he hit 13 sixes and 13 fours in his unbeaten 200 off 123 balls to record the then fastest double century in first-class cricket.
This included six sixes in an over from Tilak Raj, a fastish spinner.
“Only after hitting the fourth six did I think of emulating Sobers’ feat”, Shastri told me.
A week ago he had scored a painfully slow century against England in the Kolkata Test. When asked as to how his barrackers reacted to his six-bonanza, he smiled and said, “they thought it was the Eighth Wonder of the World!”
As stated in the beginning, no batsman has hit six sixes in an over in Test matches. Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi and South Africa’s AB de Villiers came close, hitting sixes off the first four balls.
Afridi hit 6,6,6,6,2 and 1 off India’s Harbhajan Singh in the 2005-06 Lahore Test.
More recently AB de Villiers skied 6,6,6,6 and 1 off Australia’s Andrew McDonald in the 2008-09 Cape Town Test.
India’s Kapil Dev struck four successive sixes off England’s off-spinner Eddie Hemmings in the 1990 Lord’s Test. He became the first player to hit four sixes in succession in a Test. In doing so he saved India from a follow-on.
Pakistan’s Wasim Akram holds the record of hitting most sixes, 12, in his Test innings of 257 not out. This was against Zimbabwe in the 1996-97 Sheikhupura Test.
At least three world records were shattered in minor cricket this January; the highest individual innings (1009 not out by Pranav Dhanawade, a 15-year-old cricketer from Mumbai), highest total of 3 declared for 1465 and highest margin of victory by an innings and 1382 runs.
Another milestone was that Pranav’s knock, which spanned almost seven hours, included 129 fours and 59 sixes. Can you believe, 59 sixes in an innings?
If this appears incredible, listen to this. Bill Howell was a mighty six-smasher from NSW. When representing NSW against MCC on the Sydney Cricket Ground way back in 1897-98, he smacked 95 runs in 66 minutes.
Years later The Argus magazine of 1954 reported, “We could not see where one of Howell’s sixes landed but suddenly there was a blood-curdling roar and one of the spectators remarked: ‘By cripes, Old Bill has hit a lion in the zoo.’ ”
In 1890s, the Zoo was located at Moore Park, close to the SCG.
Now, 118 years later, the scene switches to India and the World T20. As off-spinner Nathan Lyon is not in the Aussie line up, there is no chance of a lion being hit!
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