Munaf Patel has been the pick of Indian bowlers in the ongoing St. Kitts Test taking three wickets out of the five to fall in West Indies' innings including the prized scalp of Brian Lara.
But he entered the record books for wrong reasons on day two as he was carted for six consecutive fours in one single over by Ramnaresh Sarwan. This provided only the fifth instance in Test cricket history of a batsman hitting six boundaries in one over.
India's Sandeep Patil was the first batsman to perform this feat in Test cricket. Patil did so off the bowling of England's Bob Willis at Manchester in 1982. One of the fours came off a no-ball (third ball of the over) with one ball not scored off.
New Zealand's Craig McMillan became the first batsman to hit a boundary of every ball of an over when he hit five fours and a six off Pakistan's Younis Khan at Hamilton in 2000-01.
West Indies Brian Lara emulated McMillan by hitting South African Robin Peterson for four fours and two sixes at Johannesburg in 2003-04. Another West Indian Chris Gayle scored six consecutive fours of English paceman Matthew Hoggard at the Oval in 2004.
{{/usCountry}}West Indies Brian Lara emulated McMillan by hitting South African Robin Peterson for four fours and two sixes at Johannesburg in 2003-04. Another West Indian Chris Gayle scored six consecutive fours of English paceman Matthew Hoggard at the Oval in 2004.
{{/usCountry}}Sarwan, in fact, had the opportunity to have his name in a separate league of his own, but he missed it by failing to score off any runs of the seventh ball of Patel's over, which was there as a gift as Patel had over-stepped while delivering the sixth ball of this dreadful over.
Had he scored another boundary off this ball, Sarwan would have created a new world record of most number of runs and boundaries in one over.
There have now been fourteen instances of 24 or more runs being scored off a single over. However only a few are simple and straightforward with most of the instances needing detailed explanations about questions of eight and six-ball overs, overs including extras, no-balls which at the time were not debited against the bowler and other such issues.
To make things plain and simple, let us limit ourselves to only those instances when 24 or more runs were scored in an over without any help from extras.The maximum runs scored in one eight ball over are 25. New Zealand's Bert Sutcliffe and Bob Blair hit South African spinner Hugh Tayfield for so many runs at Johannesburg in 1953-54.
Apart from Sarwan, ten other players have hit 24 runs in six-ball over. They are West Indian Andy Roberts, Brian Lara and Chris Gayle, Sandeep Patil and Kapil Dev of India, England's Ian Botham, New Zealand's Ian Smith and Craig McMillan and Pakistan's Yousuf Youhana and Shahid Afridi.
There has been one more instance of 25 runs scored in one over. England's Andrew Caddick conceded so many runs in the Christchurch Test against New Zealand in 2001-02, but only 23 runs came off the bats of Nathan Astle and Chris Cairns. There was a dot ball in that over and Caddick bowled a no-ball off which one leg-bye was taken. As a result two runs were added to the total.
The world record for most runs in an over is held jointly by West Indian allrounder Garfield Sobers and Indian batsman Ravi Shastri, who both scored six consecutive sixes in first class matches.