RINKU SINGH The Five Ball Hero

The first-ever time that I learnt about someone hitting a six in the last delivery of any match to win the match was incidentally through the pages of The Teenager sometime in the 1960s. The Indian School Boys’ team was on a tour of Australia and 11 runs were required in the last two deliveries of the match for the Indian boys to win against the Australian School Boys. The Indian batter at the crease was Surinder Amarnath, the eldest son of the legendry Lala Amarnath. Surinder achieved what seemed almost impossible; hitting two sixes of the last two deliveries of the match to make it an Indian victory.

- GP CAPT ACHCHYUT KUMAR

Another occasion when a six was required on the last ball of the match was when the Indian team finished at the losing end in a One Day International. The bowler on that occasion was Chetan Sharma and the batter was Pakistan’s Javed Miandad. Chetan bowled a full toss to surprise Javed but the latter had anticipated the bowler’s intention and sent the ball soaring over the boundary line.

The first person to hit six sixes in an over was Sir Garfield St Auburn Sobers who collared Malcolm Nash in a first-class match while years later, in a Ranji Trophy match, Ravi Shastri emulated the great allrounder and the suffering bowler was Tilak Raj. However, the first ever person to hit six sixes in an international match was our own Yuvraj Singh. It all happened in the 2007 T20 World Cup when India seemed to be looking through the barrel but a 12 ball half century from Yuvraj which included a 36 run over off Stuart Broad, changed the complexion of the game totally.