Hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip hooray!
Overboundaries are to cricket what the speed of light is to physics — you can’t physically top them.
Yuvraj c Collingwood b Flintoff 58. Add to that scorecard the fact that the 58 runs were scored off 17 balls, you still get part of the picture. Words don’t usually fail us, but if you missed out on the real-time thwackfest courtesy Yuvraj Singh at Durban on Wednesday, we have literally nothing to say. Overboundaries are to cricket what the speed of light is to physics — you can’t physically top them. Also, however much of a cricket cognocento you might be — discussing the joys of watching a perfect cut, a trickle of a leg glance, a pile-driving cover drive — an overboundary that gets the maximum runs is a many-splendoured thing.
Now we all know that sixes in cricket can ‘droppeth’ like gentle rain, especially on a pitch that is favourable to batsmen or in a field that is reasonably small. But that still doesn’t take away the magic of sixes hit in quick succession — and in the case of Yuvraj, six sixes in six balls. Even though the odds are significantly larger, the aesthetic effect of ‘six-timer’ is like lightning striking the same spot over and over and over and over and over and over again.
The stunning quality of this phenomenon — seen only once in international cricket when Herschelle Gibbs hit the maximum in an over against the lowly Dutch and twice in first-class cricket courtesy Gary Sobers and Ravi Shastri — is as rare and awe-inspiring as a catastrophe in a safe place. By making the ball travel in a trajectory that disregards the boundary rope six times, Yuvraj has earned his place in the family album of cricket legends. Our heart goes out to Stuart Broad. But Dimitri Mascarenhas started the process two weeks ago.
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