An Australian third-class cricketer took an incredible six wickets in six balls to lead his side to victory on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane.
Gareth Morgan was captaining Mudgeeraba Nerang and Districts Cricket Club against Surfers Paradise in the third division of the Gold Coast Premier League when he took six wickets in the final over of the match.
Surfers Paradise were 174 runs for the loss of four wickets and needed five runs to win at the Carrera Community Center on Saturday.
Morgan said he considered giving one of his younger players the ball but then thought: “I’ll bowl – they can hit the win, this younger one doesn’t need that.”
From the first ball, he had Jake Garland caught in the middle for 65, trying to win the game by a stroke. A reporter for the Gold Coast Bulletin, Garland wrote of the afternoon under the headline: “I was the first to go in the six-ball saga.”
Connor Matheson and Surfers captain Michael Curtin were then caught on the leg to give Morgan a hat trick.
“I remember thinking after I scored the hat-trick, I don’t want to lose this game now,” Morgan told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Wade McDougall was caught at point and Riley Eckersley and Brodie Phelan bowled, leaving the non-striker stranded at the other end and the match over.
“When I saw the stumps come back on the last ball, I couldn’t believe it – I’ve never seen anything like it,” Morgan said. “Everybody was going crazy. It was unbelievable, I don’t think anyone could believe it had happened.”
The most wickets taken in an over in professional cricket is five, achieved three times — New Zealand’s Neil Wagner for Otago in 2011. Al-Amin Hossain for a Bangladesh cricket team in 2013. and Abhimanyu Mithun for the Indian state of Karnataka in 2019.
The news received prominent television coverage locally, but also reached websites and publications in countries such as India and England where cricket is extremely popular.
Catch all the latest World Cup news and live scores along with World Cup schedule and related updates on the Hindustan Times website and apps