‘My six sixes were different’, Ravi Shastri recalls hitting and commenting
Former India head coach Ravi Shastri went down memory lane as a player to remember his historic achievement of hitting ‘six sixes in an over’ and later doing commentary when Yuvraj Singh did the same against England’s Stuart Broad. Was doing.
pic.twitter.com/Bgo9FxFBq6 – ICC (@ICC) September 19, 2021
The 60-year-old feels he has been lucky to have both achieved the record and hit six sixes in an over, adding that he has also coached the team through matches where he did not hit a single six in any over . He also pointed out how scoring 36 off six balls was different from the context of the 1985 game.
“My six sixes were different, simply because, for starters, there was no television. Like Kapil Dev’s 175 in the World Cup, no television, no coverage. But six sixes were big, I didn’t realize it at the time. Till then, only one person had hit six sixes till that time and that was Sir Garfield Sobers and I became the second person to hit six sixes,” Shastri said during the latest episode of CRED’s The Long Game.
“Now first-class cricket is different from white-ball cricket. You know the fourth six was hit in that game against Baroda, you know I wasn’t even thinking six sixes. The moment the 5th hit, which It was probably the biggest because it went into the stands outside the ground at Wankhede. Then I saw all my teammates on the screen and then I realized there was an opportunity to hit 6 sixes.”
The former India captain also mentioned how he had guessed the bowler’s moves before the last delivery of that memorable over.
“I knew pretty clearly this guy’s head got tangled up now. I’m the favorite here to get it, I just have to guess. So I guessed to move the leg side down a little bit ‘make a space here , and if he bowls here I can hit him on the ground. If he bowls here, he goes here. I guessed really wrong because when I got here he went wide, but for my height Cause I could reach out and bat flat. Sightseeing for six,” he recalled.
“Everything broke there, six sixes in an over, I scored 200 runs in that innings which is the fastest double century ever in first-class cricket,” he said.
Recalling his record, the maverick coach also recalled how he understood the importance of his feat of six sixes through the years.
“But still, when I went back home, the money hadn’t dropped. It was only the next day, 3 years, 4 years, and 5 years down the line I realized that six 6s are special. And you realize 30 years later It happens that, still, no one was broke, you know, by the time Yuvraj came and got into the T20 tournament and Herschelle Gibbs got it in the next year’s World Cup game. But that’s a rare, rare one. The record was there. It is a 100 per cent record, it cannot be broken, it can only be leveled,” he said.
Interestingly, Shastri – the famous commentator – was on air during the India-England match in the 2007 T20 World Cup as Yuvraj Singh hit six sixes off Stuart Broad in the 19th over of the innings.
“I remember the India-England game (2007 World Cup). You know there was an exchange of words (between Yuvraj Singh and Andrew Flintoff), it was obviously Yuvraj chuckled. Nothing special happened. The stage was set for six and it began. The first went for six, the second went for six, the third went for six and David Lloyd jumped out of his seat and flew away. What happened after that was sheer devastation,” he said. .
He also mentioned his own feat, recalling the similarities between the two situations.
“I go to my state of mind to try to guess what should be in the minds of bowlers and batsmen, trying to guess when the 5th six was hit, David flying with me again Bhari. And I knew, and I said in the commentary, ‘I think Yuvraj is the favorite to hit six here’. That was what was about to happen. It takes terrible concentration,” he said.