Thisara Perera, the left-handed batsman, has become the first from Sri Lanka to smash six sixes in an over. The southpaw achieved the feat while representing the Sri Lanka Army in their Group A match against Bloomfield Cricket and Athletic Club in the Major Clubs Limited Over List A Tournament at the Army Ground in Panagoda.

On Sunday, the 31-year-old smashed a 13-ball 52 with eight sixes and played at a strike-rate of 400. He came to bat after Usman Ishak got rid of Ashan Randika, who was batting on 124 runs with seven fours and eight sixes. Perera came to bat with only 20 balls left in the innings, but he made sure of making his brief stay in the middle count.

Thisara Perera goes berserk

He started with a six in the last ball of the 39th over and then cleared the ropes another time in the second ball of the 40th over. In the last over, he laid into off-spin bowler Dilhan Cooray and took 36 runs off the final over. The 34-year-old Cooray went for 73 runs in his four overs and leaked runs at an expensive economy rate of 18.25.

Perera’s onslaught meant that Sri Lanka Army ended with 318 runs for the loss of three wickets in 41 overs. The game didn’t produce any result after Bloomfield were reduced to 73 for six after 17 overs. Perera didn’t get a chance to roll his arms over. However, the Colombo-born veteran went on to hog the headlines for his brutal power-hitting.

The first cricketer to hit six sixes in an over was West Indies’ Sir Garfield Sobers in 1968. South Africa’s Herschelle Gibbs was the first batter to achieve the record in international cricket during the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean.

Yuvraj Singh became the first batsman in T20Is to accomplish the feat in the 2007 T20 World Cup in South Africa. Kieron Pollard is the other batter to have reached the milestone during the recent T20I series against Sri Lanka in Antigua.

The list of batters to hit six sixes in an over in senior cricket:

Sir Garfield Sobers (1968), Ravi Shastri (1985), Herschelle Gibbs (2007), Yuvraj Singh (2007), Ross Whitely (2017), Hazratullah Zazai (2018), Leo Carter (2020), Kieron Pollard (2021), and Thisara Perera (2021).