Five wickets in five balls: Brett Randell of Central Districts achieves a first in first-class cricket

By the time the medium pacer had bowled his 13th delivery, he had already taken seven wickets for his team in New Zealand.

New Zealander Brett Randell has become the first player in the history of first-class cricket to take five wickets in five balls. The medium pacer didn't stop just there. His sixth wicket came off his eighth delivery and his seventh off his 12th.

Brett Randell has sure etched his name in history. (Central Stags on X)

On day two of the sixth round match at McLean Park against Northern Districts in the Plunket Shield, Central Districts' Randell etched his name in history with an extraordinary overall figures of 7/25. In the history of the Central Districts, only Bryan Yuile now has better figures than him in an innings. In 1966, Yuile picked up 9/100 for the Central Stags.

In reply to Central Districts' 373, fuelled by wicketkeeper Dane Cleaver's 109 , Northern Districts totally fell by the wayside and collapsed for just 82. After Central Districts decided to enforce the follow-on, Northern Districts came up with a much better performance in the second innings as they closed day two on 162/5, still trailing by 129 runs.

‘Like a pinch-me moment’

Randell surprisingly failed to take any scalp in the second innings and will hope to have another dream outing tomorrow and maybe walk away with a 10-wicket haul. By his own admission, he couldn't believe at first what he had done with the ball.

“I’m pretty blown away. The high was pretty crazy; it was like a pinch-me moment. I was trying to stay level-headed and keep putting the ball in the same area, and then after the actual hat-trick, just the same things — trying to put the ball in the same area," he said at the tea break as per nzc.nz.

He continued: “It gets drummed into us a lot that we don't want to go searching for wickets, so I was trying to just keep bowling the same ball, and our ‘Plan A’ that we’d talked about, and it came off."

Randell said he had no inkling of what he had achieved, something never witnessed before in first-class cricket. And he did it against the leading team in the Plunket Shield.

“I had no idea that it was the first time it [five wickets in five balls in first-class cricket] had happened in the world, it's seriously cool. I mean, I don't really have any words at the moment, to be honest. I'll take it.”