With the help of 13 sixes and 10 fours, MI New York stand-in captain Nicholas Pooran (137*) literally, single-handedly, helped his side lift the Major League Cricket (MLC) 2023 title in its debut season. A look at the other batters in the line-up, none of them managed to score more than even 20 runs in the innings. Striking at 249.09 during his 55-ball hard-hitting knock, Pooran chased down a 184-run target with as many as four overs to spare in the night of the final.
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The 27-year-old, who decided to forego the ongoing home ODI series against India, treated the Seattle Oscars bowlers with absolute disdain. Treating the pacers and spinners alike, he smashed them mostly down the ground or bamboozled them towards his favourite regions between square leg and deep mid-wicket.
Unbelievably so, this is the very Pooran who had played out five dot balls during a super over of a Caribbean Premier League fixture around a decade ago.
Nicholas Pooran Played 5 Dot Balls In Super Over
It was a CPL 2014 match between Guyana Amazon Warriors and Trinidad & Tobago Red Steel. Playing for T & T, Pooran was sent out to bat as his team was supposed to score 12 runs in the super over. The bowler in front of him was experienced spinner Sunil Narine.
Turning the ball away from him and bowling way outside his reach with his off-spinners, Narine did not let Pooran’s bat make contact with the ball even once during the first four deliveries. The then 18-year-old Pooran kept swinging his bat in the best manner he had learnt but to no avail.
Finally, on the fifth delivery he did manage to get bat on ball, but the ball landed straight into the hands of the fielder stationed at the long-off fence. Incoming batter Ross Taylor, too, failed to connect an attempted slog-sweep on the final delivery as Narine bowled the first-ever maiden in a T20 super over.
Earlier, both the teams had finished tied at the score of 119, with Pooran having scored some crucial 37 runs from 17 balls.
Are 13 Sixes The Maximum By A Batter In T20 Innings?
First things first, records in the newly introduced franchise leagues like the MLC or International League T20 (ILT20) are not considered part of T20s as the host nation is an associate member of the ICC (International Cricket Council).
Regardless, Pooran’s 13 sixes, hit during MLC 2023 final does not find mention even in the Top 10 list of players to have smashed the maximum number of sixes in a T20 innings.
The record is presently held by Universe Boss Chris Gayle for hitting as many as 18 sixes for Rangpur Riders against Dhaka Dynamites during the final match of Bangladesh Premier League 2017 in Mirpur.
Next in the list also happens to be Gayle’s 17 sixes for Royal Challengers Bangalore during an IPL 2013 match against Pune Warriors India in Bengaluru. At the third place is the Indian domestic batter Punit Bisht, who had also hit 17 sixes for Meghalaya in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2021 match against Mizoram in Chennai.
