Four wickets

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Four wickets

There are two main tasks in the professional cricket championship: to knock out the batsman with the help of high-quality innings and also to earn as many runs as possible after the bowler throws the ball at the batsman.

To knock out at least one batsman per innings or game is already a sign that the bowler has good skills in his innings. The batting team needs only such bowlers. Because the faster the team knocks out all the batsmen, the less the batting team will earn runs.

Four wickets (also 4WI) is one of the major achievements in cricket. Not every cricketer can knock out four wickets in one inning. Always when serving, the wicket is protected by a player with a bat. If the wicket is knocked out – the real batsman leaves the field. However, to score four wickets means not only to knock out the wicket with the ball. Under the phrase four wickets, all methods of dismissing a batsman can be described, for example:

  • Direct knocking of the wicket;
  • After the throw, the ball bounces off the bat and falls into the hands of the wicketkeeper;
  • After the kick, the ball is immediately caught by the fielders (without bouncing off the ground);
  • After serving, the ball hits the feet of the player with the bat.

Taking four wickets or more in one inning is most often found in One Day or Twenty20 matches.

Lasith Malinga is a professional cricketer from Sri Lanka. Malinga has a number of interesting records and achievements, but the most amazing is that the cricketer is the only player in the world who was able to take four wickets for four innings in a row in two different matches.

The first time this happened was in the 2007 ODI Cricket World Cup between Sri Lanka and South Africa. Then Malinga did not participate as a batsman. He put all his professionalism into serving. Thanks to this, in one of the overs for four consecutive throws, he was able to knock out four batsmen from the game.

We managed to repeat this unique achievement 12 years later, in 2019, at a T20I match. Then Sri Lanka met with the New Zealand national team. Lasith Malinga managed to knock out four wickets immediately for four balls in a row in one of the overs. After the match, the record-holder was able to comment on his result with the following words:

I have certain skills in knocking out wickets that I can use better than others. I don’t care who believes in it or not; the main thing is that I believe in it. That’s why I always want to control the game when I get the ball in my hands.

According to official statistics, the last player who managed to hit more than four wickets in one inning (6 wickets) in a test match is the English player Jonathan Marc Bairstow in 2016 (a game against South Africa).

In ODI matches, such an achievement was last registered at the beginning of 2020. Nepalese player Karan KC was able to take four wickets in one inning at the game against the Oman national team.

As for the matches of the T20I format, the last player here was Deepak Chahar, who in November 2019 was able to knock out six wickets in one inning in a match against Bangladesh.

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Nisha Bhavani
Author: Nisha Bhavani Position: Cricket Expert

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