Australian cricketer takes six wickets in a single over to lead his team to improbable win

An Australian third-grade cricketer has taken an incredible six wickets in six balls to lead his team to victory on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane.

Gareth Morgan was captain of the Mudgeeraba Nerang and Districts Cricket Club against Surfers Paradise in the Gold Coast’s Premier League division three when he took the six wickets in the final over of the match.

Surfers Paradise had 174 runs for the loss of four wickets and needed five runs to win at the Carrera Community Centre venue on Saturday.

Morgan said he considered giving one of his younger bowlers the ball, but then thought: "I’ll bowl - they can hit the winning runs off me, this younger fella doesn’t need that.’”

Off the first ball, he had opener Jake Garland caught at midwicket for 65 trying to win the game with one hit. A journalist for the Gold Coast Bulletin newspaper, Garland wrote about the afternoon under the headline: "I was first to go in six-ball epic.”

Next up, Connor Matheson and Surfers captain Michael Curtin were caught on the leg side to give Morgan a hat trick.

"I remember thinking after I got the hat trick, I don’t want to lose this game now,” Morgan told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Wade McDougall was caught at point and Riley Eckersley and Brodie Phelan were bowled, leaving the non-striker stranded at the other end and the match over.

"When I saw the stumps go back on the last ball I couldn’t believe it - I’ve never seen anything like it,” Morgan said. "Everyone was going wild. It was incredible, I don’t think anyone could believe it had happened.”

The most wickets taken in an over of professional cricket is five, achieved three times - New Zealand’s Neil Wagner for Otago in 2011; Al-Amin Hossain for a Bangladesh Cricket Board XI in 2013; and Abhimanyu Mithun for Indian state side Karnataka in 2019.

The news was given prominent television treatment locally but also reached websites and publications in countries like India and England where cricket is extremely popular.

Associated Press