January 10, 1985. Wankhede Stadium. Bombay versus Baroda in the Ranji Trophy.
Ravi Shastri walked in and did something no Indian had ever done. He hit six sixes in an over and made the fastest double century first-class cricket has seen. H Natarajan watched it all unfold from the Press Box and told Cricketcountry what he saw.
The Man Who Hated to Hit
Shastri had a reputation. He blocked. He defended. He took forever. Just ten days earlier in Calcutta, he made 111 against England. Took him 455 minutes. 357 balls. The crowd booed him. They called him boring.
On January 10, something switched inside him. He came in at number 6 when score was 201 for 4. Then he started hitting. Fifty came in 38 minutes. 42 balls. Three sixes, four fours. Hundred in 71 minutes. 80 balls. Four sixes, nine fours. This wasn’t the Shastri we knew. This was someone else.
Tilak Raj’s Over From Hell
Then came the 19th over of the innings. Left-arm spinner Tilak Raj ran in. Shastri was on 147. What happened next lasted minutes but stayed forever.
First ball: Six over long-on. Second: Bigger six. Third: Even bigger. Fourth: Into the stands. Fifth: Massive, clearing the boundary by yards. Sixth: Reached out, flat-batted, into the sightscreen.
Thirty-six runs. Six balls. Shastri raised his arms. The crowd went mad. He had matched Sir Garry Sobers, who did this to Malcolm Nash in 1968 at Swansea. Dicky Rutnagur was in the Press Box. He had seen both. Rutnagur said Sobers was cleaner. Nash was a frontline spinner. Tilak Raj was part-time.
A former India player, now gone, disagreed. “English grounds are smaller. Wankhede is a Test venue. Shastri’s hits were monstrous.”
The Bowler’s Face
Tilak Raj looked broken. He wouldn’t even pose for a photo with Shastri for the next day’s papers. Natarajan remembers him looking shell-shocked and very upset. Who wouldn’t be? You run in six times and watch the ball disappear six times. Your name becomes a footnote in history.
Shastri wasn’t done. He kept hitting. Nine more sixes. Four more fours. He reached 200 in 113 minutes. The fastest ever. The old record was 120 minutes, held by Gilbert Jessop from 1903 and Clive Lloyd from 1976. Shastri had broken something that stood for 82 years.
What Could Have Been
He needed just two more sixes to equal John Reid’s record of 15 sixes in an innings. Reid hit 15 when he made 296 for Wellington in 1962-63. Shastri had 13 sixes. Gavaskar declared at 457 for five. Shastri was left on 200 not out.
Baroda needed 499 to win. They collapsed to 81 for seven. Shastri even took two wickets . He finished with two for five in four overs.
The Man Himself Speaks
Shastri later said his six sixes were different. “No television. Like Kapil’s 175 in the 1983 World Cup. No coverage. I didn’t realise only Sobers had done it before. I became the second man.”
He explained his thinking. “Till the fourth six, I wasn’t thinking about six sixes. The fifth one was the biggest. It went into the stands. I saw my teammates along the sightscreen. Then I realised.”
He anticipated the last ball. “I knew his head was muddled. I just had to guess right. I moved down leg, thinking he’d bowl there. He went wide but I’m tall. I reached out and flat-batted it.”
The crowd erupted. “All hell broke loose.”
Why It Mattered More Later
Shastri said the penny dropped slowly. “When I went home, I didn’t get it. Only years later I realised six sixes is special. Thirty years later, still nobody had broken it. Then Yuvraj did it in 2007. Herschelle Gibbs in the World Cup next year. It’s a 100 percent record. Can’t be broken. Only equalled.”
He was commentating during Yuvraj’s six sixes off Stuart Broad. “There was an exchange with Flintoff. Yuvraj was rattled. The stage was set. I went back to my mindset when I hit six sixes. When the fifth six went, I told everyone Yuvraj was favourite to hit the sixth. It takes fierce concentration.”
A Day Without Cameras
Here’s what strikes you. No television cameras captured Shastri’s magic. It lives through word of mouth, through men like H Natarajan who sat in the Press Box and watched every ball. Through Tilak Raj’s trauma. Through Dicky Rutnagur’s memory of seeing history twice.
41 years ago, A defensive batsman turned into a monster. A bowler turned into a trivia question. A captain’s strictness became a footnote to something bigger. And cricket got a story that grew more special with time.
The records still stand. Six sixes in an over is still rare. But that day at Wankhede, it was just a man with a bat, a confused bowler, and a crowd that couldn’t believe what they were seeing.