That’s out of the Ground

In cricket quality batsmen were always treated with respect. All the batsmen can broadly be divided into two categories: one is attacking batsmen and another one is technical batsmen. As cricket is getting older players of technical categories became lesser now a days. ODI and now T-20 helped the attacking category to grow at faster rate. Especially T-20 worked like Borunvita to attacking category. Sanath Jayasuriya, Chris Gayle, Virendar Sehwag, Brendon Mccullum, Kieron Pollard, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Herschelle Gibbs, David Warner and Shahid Afridi are the kings of this category. All this players are the brand ambassadors of this category. Pitch condition, opponent and match condition doesn’t hassle them at all. Their first and last catchword is to hit the ball hard. From the above list of players there is a player for whom this catchword is his life.

At the age of 16 he astonished the Cricketing World with his hard hitting. He scored fastest hundred of just 33 balls including 11 six and 6 boundaries. He made this record way back in 1996 and till now no one would able to break this record. Yuvraj Singh, Ravi Shahtri and Garry Sobers hit 6 sixes in an over at some level of cricket. In the first ODI against Southafrica in the current series he hit six number 300 in ODI. He is the only batsman in the history of Cricket to hit this ample number of sixes.

He is at the top of this list and Sanath Jayasuriya who is at second number in this list hit 270 sixes and for that Sanath took 445 matches. Afridi hits 308 sixes in 352 ODI. From the list of batsmen mentioned above each of them crossed the line between attacking batsmen and technical batsmen category more than once. But, Afridi is always allegiant to this category. Sehwag is quite close to him in this allegiant ship, but when he was not in good form he started playing defensively.

Shahid Afridi had always played fearlessly and still playing like he was playing when he is new to this international cricket.

Whether it’s Test Match, ODI and T-20 crowd always cherished to watch bowl sailing over the boundary rope. There were some more records regarding six hitting in Cricket. Let’s look at them below:-

S.NO	Record	Name of Cricketer	Number of Sixes	Number of Matches/Opponent Team
1.	Most Sixes in ODI	Shahid Afridi(PAK)	308	352
2.	Most Sixes in Test Matches	Adam Gilchrist(AUS)	100	96(137 Inning)
3.	Most Sixes in T-20	Brendon Mccullum(NZ)	73	60
4.	Most Sixes in an Inning(ODI)	Shane Watson(AUS)	15	Bangladesh(11 April 2011)
5.	Most Sixes in an Inning(Test Matches)	Waseem Akram(PAK)	12	Zimbabwe(17 Oct 1996)
6.	Most Sixes in an Inning(T-20)	Richard Levi(SAF)	13	New Zealand (19 Feb 2012)
7.	Most Sixes in an Over(ODI)	Herschelle Gibbs(SAF)	06	Netherland (16 Mar 2007), Bowler (Daan van Bunge)
8.	Most Sixes in an Over(Test Matches)	Kapil Dev(IND)	04	England(1990), Bowler (EE Hemmings)
		Shahid Afridi(PAK)		India (2006), Bowler (Harbhajan Singh)
		AB de Villiers(SAF)		Australia(2008-09), Bowler (AB McDonald)
9.	Most Sixes in an Over(T-20)	Yuvraj Singh	06	England(19 Sep 2007), Bowler(Stuart Broad)

Cricket had always been a game where you need to develope proper skills and technique to play the game. But hitting sixes in Cricket always need power because if you put more power even an edge can go out of the ground.
In Test Matches still there is no one who hit 6 sixes in an over as Yuvraj did in T-20 and Gibbs in ODI.Wait is on but who knows next match or next inning will end this wait.

Chirag Joshi

Sports Editor