Shades of Sobers as Indian batsman hits seven of the best in six-hitting romp

At the St Helen’s ground in Swansea on August 31, 1968, Garry Sobers became the first man to hit six sixes in an over, treating the Glamorgan left-armer Malcolm Nash with disdain as he propelled Nottinghamshire towards a first-day declaration.

Back then, in the summer before Woodstock and the first lunar landing, it was the cricketing equivalent of the four-minute mile.

Sobers, the dashing West Indian, had achieved something truly incredible, Wilf Wooller’s simple yet effective television commentary capturing the moment as the final ball sailed over midwicket.

“He’s done it! He’s done it! And, my goodness, it’s gone way down to Swansea!”

Fast forward 54 years and an achievement which some thought might never be equalled has now been emulated nine times, with Ruturaj Gaikwad, an Indian opening batsman, the latest to achieve the feat in Ahmedabad on Monday.

Gaikwad actually went one better than Sobers and indeed all of those on a list which includes Ravi Shastri, Herschelle Gibbs, Yuvraj Singh, Ross Whiteley, Hazratullah Zazai, Leo Carter, Kieron Pollard and Thisara Perera.

For Gaikwad hit seven sixes in six balls, the fifth delivery being a no-ball, off the left-arm spinner Shiva Singh while playing for Maharashtra against Uttar Pradesh in a Vijay Hazare Trophy quarter-final.

It was the penultimate over of the Maharashtra innings, with Gaikwad, the captain, going on to an unbeaten 220 in the 50-over contest which his side won by 58 runs.

The 25-year-old right-hander faced 159 balls and lashed 16 sixes in all - equalling the List A record - and 10 fours.

The total of 43 runs from the over matched the combined effort of Brett Hampton and Joe Carter off the medium-pacer Willem Ludick for Northern Districts against Central Districts in a 50-over match in New Zealand’s Ford Trophy in 2018, an over that contained two no-balls.

The most number of runs believed to have been conceded in an over anywhere is 77 in horribly contrived fashion in another match in New Zealand in 1990, a three-day affair between Wellington and Canterbury.

Lee Germon hit eight sixes in this over, bowled by Wellington’s Bert Vance, who sent down at least 22 deliveries amid a blizzard of deliberate no-balls and full tosses which left the scorers dazed and confused.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Gaikwad’s tour de force is that it barely registers on cricket’s shock scale.

Where once Sobers achieved something truly unique, now six sixes in an over - or seven sixes in this case - is something of a banality, an accepted occurrence.

The proliferation of white-ball cricket, of larger bats, of smaller boundaries, of more attacking strokeplay in general, in all forms of cricket, means that we are no longer surprised when a Gaikwad comes along to add his name to the record books.

But there is nothing quite like the first time, as the saying goes, and that magical day when Sobers sent Nash’s sixth ball out of the St Helen’s ground and “way down to Swansea”.