The Indian Premier League’s records book just received a new entrant during the match between hosts Mumbai Indians and the Lucknow Super Giants at the Wankhede Stadium on Sunday, April 27.
MI’s veteran opener Rohit Sharma wasted no time in reminding everyone why he is called the ‘Hitman’ after he hit two sixes of the first two balls he faced in his innings against LSG.
Another feather in cap
With these two maximums, Rohit Sharma became the third opening batsman in the history of the IPL to hit two sixes of the first two balls of his innings after Virat Kohli and Yashasvi Jaiswal.
MI’s ‘Hitman’ already has many record to his name. He is one of only two captains to lead their teams to 5 IPL titles while also being the player with the most titles to his name, six; he won his first title with Deccan Chargers in 2009 under Adam Gilchrist’s captaincy.
Sharma is not called Hitman for no reason.
In 2024, the Indian captain opened his account with back-to-back sixes in the second Test against Bangladesh at Kanpur’s Green Park, making him only the fourth batsman to ever achieve this feat in Test cricket.
The other players to hit sixes off their first two balls in a men’s Test innings are:
- Foffie Williams (West Indies) vs Jim Laker (England) in 1948
- Sachin Tendulkar (India) vs Nathan Lyon (Australia) in 2013, and
- Umesh Yadav (India) vs George Linde (South Africa) in 2019
IPL elite club
Virat Kohli, Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s talisman, was the first batsman to achieve this feat, way back in 2019, after he hit opened his account with 2 sixes against Rajasthan Royals’ Varun Aaron.
The rain curtailed match, reduced to 5 overs each, did not produce a result as the relentless rain in Bengaluru shut down any chance of a result at the M Chinnaswamy stadium.
In IPL 2023, RR’s Yashasvi Jaiswal did the same thing, this time against a surprising opening bowler in the form of Nitish Rana, who was with the Kolkata Knight Riders then.
Jaiswal was devastating from the get go as he hit 26 runs of that fateful first over and ended the match unbeaten on 98 (47) as RR knocked off KKR’s target of 150 in 13.1 overs.
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