Rohit Sharma hit four sixes against New Zealand at the Wankhede Stadium in the semifinal of the 2023 ODI World Cup on Wednesday, November 15. The third of these took him past Chris Gayle’s World Cup record of 49 sixes, and made him the first to reach the fifty-mark in the competition. He finished the day on 51. He will get another chance, to gather more.
Rohit Sharma has also hit 28 sixes in the 2023 World Cup, two more than Gayle’s previous record tally of 26, set in 2015. With 24 sixes, Shreyas Iyer has been moving up the list at a rapid rate as well.
The first semifinal of the 2023 ICC Men's Cricket World Cup between India New Zealand alone saw 30 sixes being hit - 11 by New Zealand and a whopping 19 by India (eight of them by Shreyas alone). With two matches to go, the 2023 World Cup has already witnessed the most sixes for a single edition of the tournament by some distance. The count moved past 600 over the course of the first semifinal: the previous record, set in 2015, was only 463 – and that was way clear of the 373 set in 2007.
Already in this world cup, six players have 20 or more sixes -with one or more matches remaining: Rohit Sharma (28), Shreyas Iyer (24), GJ Maxwell (22), Quinton de Kock (21), Mitchell Marsh (20) and David Warner (20).
New Zealand's Daryl Mitchell ended his world cup campaign with 22 sixes, including seven sixes scored in the semifinal against India.
Sixes at the World Cup – a history
It is difficult to tell who hit the first six in World Cup cricket, for four matches began at the same time on the first day – at Lord’s, Edgbaston, Headingley, and Old Trafford. The honours probably rested with Keith Fletcher, who hit a six from #3 for England, or New Zealand’s Glenn Turner, who batted through the 60-ball innings and hit two sixes.
The first genuine six-fest at the World Cup came in the 1979 final, at Lord’s, where Viv Richards and Collis King slammed three apiece as the pair added 139 in 77 minutes. The West Indies amassed 286-9 and bowled out England for 194 to defend their title.
The World Cup expanded from 15 matches to 27 in 1983. This also introduced smaller grounds and, as a result, more sixes. The tournament witnessed at least 77 sixes – the details are not available for every match – after 28 in each of 1975 and 1979.
David Gower, typically perceived as an elegant artist, hit five sixes in his 130 against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Four days later, Gower cleared the boundary four times against New Zealand at Edgbaston.
Until then, no one had hit four sixes in a World Cup innings. Yet, three days after Gower’s Edgbaston onslaught, Kapil Dev famously hit six sixes during his iconic 175 not out against Zimbabwe at Tunbridge Wells.
The 1987 edition saw 126 sixes at a phenomenal rate of 4.67 a match. Navjot Sidhu announced himself to ODI cricket with nine sixes in his first two matches, but it was Richards who broke two of Kapil’s World Cup records in the same innings. Not only was Richards’ 181 against Sri Lanka at Karachi a new high, so were his seven sixes.
This was Richards’ last World Cup. He retired with at least 22 sixes – more than twice of anyone else’s tally at that point. For perspective, even after 20 years of T20 cricket, only six batters have hit more than 30 sixes at the time of writing of this piece.
The sixes count dropped to 92 in 1992 before rising to 148 in 1996. These two editions witnessed most unusual chart toppers. Promoted to the top to take advantage of the 15-over restrictions, middle-order batter Mark Greatbatch hit 13 sixes in the former. And Asanka Gurusinha, a defensive player of some repute, smashed 12-over-boundaries in the latter.
In 1999, Lance Klusener, batting mostly in the lower middle-order, got out only twice for his 281 runs. His 10 sixes – in only 230 balls – were the most in the that edition as well.
Also read: Angelo Mathews timed out and 10 other unusual World Cup dismissals
The modern era
The equation changed completely in the 21st century. A staggering 266 sixes were hit in 2003, a giant leap from the previous record of 153. Sourav Ganguly led the way with 15 sixes, but the biggest surprise was Canadian John Davison, who finished third with 12.
In the final, Ricky Ponting hit 140 not out to help Australia beat India. Ponting’s innings included eight sixes – a new World Cup record.
In 2007 Matthew Hayden hit 18 sixes to beat Ganguly’s record. Hayden’s record stood until 2015, when Gayle went past him. As mentioned, Rohit currently holds the top spot.
Chris Gayle broke another record in 2015, against Zimbabwe. Earlier in that edition, David Miller had hit nine sixes, also against Zimbabwe, to set a new record, but Gayle nearly doubled it with a count of 16.
The only person to have bettered this till date at the World Cup is Eoin Morgan, who hit one more than Gayle against Afghanistan in 2019.
Also read: Ahead of the ODI World Cup 2023, a look back at the Indian cricket team's track record
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