Biggest six

[Cabinet96]

Perhaps when "they" measure these things it might not always be the same people doing it.

Indeed. Which is why I'm extremely sceptical about how accurate it is.

 

[_Ed_]

The Guptill six, for those who haven't seen it:
ONE OF THE BIGGEST SIXES EVER - MARTIN GUPTILL (127m) - YouTube

 

[KiWiNiNjA]

Pollard has had one measured at 128m during the IPL. That seems to be the longest recorded six.

Guptill's 127m six looks to be the longest recorded six in international cricket.

 

[Jono]

The Guptill six, for those who haven't seen it:
ONE OF THE BIGGEST SIXES EVER - MARTIN GUPTILL (127m) - YouTube

Far out before you linked that I tried to find footage and got this video

martin guptills massive 6 vs south africa 2012!!! biggest 6 in the world - YouTube

 

[uvelocity]

Surely by definition if it's hit on a low trajectory it's not going to go miles past where it ended up when compared to something that hits the roof 60m up?

when I said low I meant flat, The boxes at the gabba are how many metres off ground level and 100m from the bat. And I'm not even saying it was the biggest six, but clearly they didn't measure where it would have landed imo

 

[wellAlbidarned]

I'm 100% sure you are wrong.

It's the same in baseball. They measure home runs by where they would have landed at ground level. They have a whole database of it, and it's pretty accurate.

Home Run Tracker

Using Google earth's "ruler" function I've found that the roof of the midwicket area is about 80m from either end of the pitch, and 125m being across the road outside the stadium. So what you've said sounds about right.

 

[Biryani Pillow]

In 1982 at The Oval Ian Botham hit a six off Dilp Doshi that broke a slate off the roof of the old Tavern Stand.

When it hit the roof (near the top) it had only just passed its zenith.

It must have been at least 90m from where Botham played the shot to that point.

 

[kingjulian]

No offence, but i'm almost 100% certain the biggest six must have been hit in the last 15 years...10 years even.

In debates like longest six, fastest bowler etc, invariably someone will bring up a player, who is porbably dead or close to it by now and say he did it better than anyone who has played the game since.

I find it incredibly hard to believe it.

Give me one athletic achievement that has stood the test of time or remained for over 100 years...in fact, almost all of them get bettered every 5 years or so.

That is how humans are.....In 2003 the PGA governing body had to step in to preserve the idea of hitting the ball long being a rarity. Yet we somehow think Cricket is so different that some granpa was able to hit it longer than anyone currently playing or was able to bowl faster than anyone who is currently playing.

We have better bats, bio-mechanical study etc, we can even bend our arms 15% when bowling now...and yet people think that back in the day players could hit the ball longer and bowl quicker?

Give me a break...

I'm sorry about the rant...had to get it off of my chest...

In 10 years we may have bowlers crossing 100 miles more often, and we'd probably still be saying Jeff Thomo was faster than all of them combined...

 

[unam]

100 % Agree with that ^. its hard to imagine, doesn't matter how strong the player is/was, that he can hit longer sixes with those old bats than the bats the players use these days.

 

[fredfertang]

I don't disagree with the last two posts at all, which makes it all the more remarkable that it is more than 112 years since anyone hit the ball over the pavilion at Lord's

 

[Biryani Pillow]

No offence, but i'm almost 100% certain the biggest six must have been hit in the last 15 years...10 years even.

In debates like longest six, fastest bowler etc, invariably someone will bring up a player, who is porbably dead or close to it by now and say he did it better than anyone who has played the game since.

I find it incredibly hard to believe it.

Give me one athletic achievement that has stood the test of time or remained for over 100 years...in fact, almost all of them get bettered every 5 years or so.

That is how humans are.....In 2003 the PGA governing body had to step in to preserve the idea of hitting the ball long being a rarity. Yet we somehow think Cricket is so different that some granpa was able to hit it longer than anyone currently playing or was able to bowl faster than anyone who is currently playing.

We have better bats, bio-mechanical study etc, we can even bend our arms 15% when bowling now...and yet people think that back in the day players could hit the ball longer and bowl quicker?

Give me a break...

I'm sorry about the rant...had to get it off of my chest...

In 10 years we may have bowlers crossing 100 miles more often, and we'd probably still be saying Jeff Thomo was faster than all of them combined...

100 % Agree with that ^. its hard to imagine, doesn't matter how strong the player is/was, that he can hit longer sixes with those old bats than the bats the players use these days.

I saw a programme the other week involving some of the Lancashire team from the 1970s.

The very question of the modern heavy bats was raised.

They observed that they had tried these bats and, although the bats had more wood they didn't actually hit the ball noticeably harder or further.

This is also the view of some pretty good and very experienced Club batsmen I've spoken to. I certainly don't sense greater power off the bat when I'm umpiring.

Those old bats - from top Club level upwards - were damn good.

It may be that FC players are more likely to spend more tmie on the weights so there are more big hitters but Botham and the like had plenty of natural strength.

Bio-mechanics helps bowlers to find their most effective action - but many find that by themselves through practice.

The golf analogy is fallacious because the actual materials used in golf clubs changed drastically. Give Tiger Woods a set of 1950s clubs and see if it could out hit Gary Player's distances at the time?

In nearly 40 years of watching cricket I would say the quickest bowler I have seen, when he slipped himself, was Sylvester Clarke. A lazy bugger and not that fit but extremely strong and with amazingly flexible back muscles (Marshall was close in this respect apparently). I never saw any of Thompson's quickest spells but he was the quickest Ive seen on a consistent basis alongside Micheal Holding and Brett Lee.

And re the Botham shot - I was there and can vouch for it (the broken roof slate is in the library in the Oval Pavilion btw).

And Richie Benaud - amongst the least likely people to have an "in my day" attitude you'll ever come across I'm sure youll agree - reckons the quickest bowler hes ever seen was Frank Tyson.

 

[kingjulian]

100m sprint, 200m sprint, long jump, high jump, 100 m free style swimming, breast stroke, pole vault ....etc...how old do you think the records in these are? It can't be too old because we always find a way to do things better..

So long as things are measured accurately, this can probably be used to prove all aspect of sport...longest sixes and fastest balls in Cricket is no different.

This is without considering the effect of technology on things like Bats...

As for your comments about Bats...cold hard evidence say otherwise. More boundaries are hit now than ever, and it's always increasing....

History of Cricket: The Evolution of the Cricket Bat and Batting Techniques

I'm actually so sure about this, that i'm not even open to debate, as we will both be wasting each other's time...

Let's just agree to disagree, but i think you are deluded by nostalgia...there i said it.

 

[Biryani Pillow]

100m sprint, 200m sprint, long jump, high jump, 100 m free style swimming, breast stroke, pole vault ....etc...how old do you think the records in these are? It can't be too old because we always find a way to do things better..

As for your comments about Bats...cold hard evidence say otherwise. More boundaries are hit now than ever, and it's always increasing....

History of Cricket: The Evolution of the Cricket Bat and Batting Techniques

Let's just agree to disagree, but i think you are deluded by nostalgia...there i said it.

Where you have a target (like a record time or distance) you have soemthing to work towards and beat it - so that's a bit fallacious too.

Could not 'more boundaries being hit' be down to a change of attitude to batting rather than equipment? I suspect more boundaries were hit in the years immediately before WW1 than for a long tome afterwards. And thats probably true in the 3 or 4 years after WW2 compared to the 1950s - the game became rather staid in the latter period from what I understand.

I, like Mr Benaud, am not one to wallow in nostalgia (except in popular music which was so much better in the 1970s than any time since) but also am wise enough to know not only the old isn't always best but neither is the new - and also to trust my eyes.

You might also want to think on this. If the modern bowler is so much faster do you not think that at least one batsman from the time when they got to be so would support the observation.

Hobbs played against Cotter and Larwood (actually he thought Neville Know was the quickest he faced), Larwood against Bradman who also played against Lindwall. Lindwall played against Cowdrey who faced Thompson who bowled at Viv Richards who faced etc.......

Someone would surely have said "actually they're markedly quicker now" if they were.

 

[Sparkley]

Mark smashed Allan for a very big 6 at the G in the 90's IIRC. Easily the biggest Ive seen.

 

[uvelocity]

I don't disagree with the last two posts at all, which makes it all the more remarkable that it is more than 112 years since anyone hit the ball over the pavilion at Lord's

nice post

 

[kingjulian]

Where you have a target (like a record time or distance) you have soemthing to work towards and beat it - so that's a bit fallacious too.

Could not 'more boundaries being hit' be down to a change of attitude to batting rather than equipment? I suspect more boundaries were hit in the years immediately before WW1 than for a long tome afterwards. And thats probably true in the 3 or 4 years after WW2 compared to the 1950s - the game became rather staid in the latter period from what I understand.

I, like Mr Benaud, am not one to wallow in nostalgia (except in popular music which was so much better in the 1970s than any time since) but also am wise enough to know not only the old isn't always best but neither is the new - and also to trust my eyes.

You might also want to think on this. If the modern bowler is so much faster do you not think that at least one batsman from the time when they got to be so would support the observation.

Hobbs played against Cotter and Larwood (actually he thought Neville Know was the quickest he faced), Larwood against Bradman who also played against Lindwall. Lindwall played against Cowdrey who faced Thompson who bowled at Viv Richards who faced etc.......

Someone would surely have said "actually they're markedly quicker now" if they were.

We are never going to reach an agreement on this. We are both going to dismiss each other's points as "fallacious". So the best thing to do is forget about this, and treat each other's post as just opinions....i'm just may be a bit more steadfast in my opinion than you are.

Anyway, I disagree because...
1. Distance covered by a shot and Speed bowled are reasonable targets. Why do you think there is special mitigating factors preventing us from scaling previously set records?
2. While boundaries scored may not be the best indicator of improvement in wallopability (for lack of a better word), it's a much better argument than "someone from Leicester county said so". Also the article i posted clearly mentions the changes made to the Cricket bat design and construction that can qualitatively verify that claim as well.
3. Re Batsmen from those era not mentioning that bowlers are faster now...why should they? It pisses on what they achieved...Why would they do it, after working hard to achieve it in the first place? Over the next 20 years we will be measuring bowling speeds regularly and there will be no place to hide...i think we will see consistent increment (even if the scale of the increment is small) in bowling speed. I think we now have a lot more bowlers bowling closer to 150k regularly than we have ever had in the history of Cricket...it's become a bit of a commonplace...even the Indians have got one or two now...
4. If you asked a few players in Indian domestic cricket who played against him, i swear they'd say Kapil Dev back in the day was much quicker than bowlers today....which would simply not be true. Dev was at best a 135 to 140k bowler at his peak...may be even slower..

Cummins
Steyn
Malinga
Morkel
Finn
Yadav
Pattinson
Lee
Siddle
Johnson
Roach
Edwards
Amir
Harris

all bowlers capable of bowling 150+ at will.... name another era where there were so many around? They are not all good bowlers, but they have certainly got the pace....it seems almost every Test playing country now has two of these 150+ bowlers knocking around...

Yet there are still people harping about Larwood making batsmen hop and skip in the bodyline series...but when i see the footage i'm mostly underwhelmed!

 

[unam]

I saw a programme the other week involving some of the Lancashire team from the 1970s.

The very question of the modern heavy bats was raised.

They observed that they had tried these bats and, although the bats had more wood they didn't actually hit the ball noticeably harder or further.

This is also the view of some pretty good and very experienced Club batsmen I've spoken to. I certainly don't sense greater power off the bat when I'm umpiring.

Those old bats - from top Club level upwards - were damn good.

It may be that FC players are more likely to spend more tmie on the weights so there are more big hitters but Botham and the like had plenty of natural strength.

Bio-mechanics helps bowlers to find their most effective action - but many find that by themselves through practice.

The golf analogy is fallacious because the actual materials used in golf clubs changed drastically. Give Tiger Woods a set of 1950s clubs and see if it could out hit Gary Player's distances at the time?

In nearly 40 years of watching cricket I would say the quickest bowler I have seen, when he slipped himself, was Sylvester Clarke. A lazy bugger and not that fit but extremely strong and with amazingly flexible back muscles (Marshall was close in this respect apparently). I never saw any of Thompson's quickest spells but he was the quickest Ive seen on a consistent basis alongside Micheal Holding and Brett Lee.

And re the Botham shot - I was there and can vouch for it (the broken roof slate is in the library in the Oval Pavilion btw).

And Richie Benaud - amongst the least likely people to have an "in my day" attitude you'll ever come across I'm sure youll agree - reckons the quickest bowler hes ever seen was Frank Tyson.

Any chance of finding the video of it?????

 

[unam]

We are never going to reach an agreement on this. We are both going to dismiss each other's points as "fallacious". So the best thing to do is forget about this, and treat each other's post as just opinions....i'm just may be a bit more steadfast in my opinion than you are.

Anyway, I disagree because...
1. Distance covered by a shot and Speed bowled are reasonable targets. Why do you think there is special mitigating factors preventing us from scaling previously set records?
2. While boundaries scored may not be the best indicator of improvement in wallopability (for lack of a better word), it's a much better argument than "someone from Leicester county said so". Also the article i posted clearly mentions the changes made to the Cricket bat design and construction that can qualitatively verify that claim as well.
3. Re Batsmen from those era not mentioning that bowlers are faster now...why should they? It pisses on what they achieved...Why would they do it, after working hard to achieve it in the first place? Over the next 20 years we will be measuring bowling speeds regularly and there will be no place to hide...i think we will see consistent increment (even if the scale of the increment is small) in bowling speed. I think we now have a lot more bowlers bowling closer to 150k regularly than we have ever had in the history of Cricket...it's become a bit of a commonplace...even the Indians have got one or two now...
4. If you asked a few players in Indian domestic cricket who played against him, i swear they'd say Kapil Dev back in the day was much quicker than bowlers today....which would simply not be true. Dev was at best a 135 to 140k bowler at his peak...may be even slower..

Cummins
Steyn
Malinga
Morkel
Finn
Yadav
Pattinson
Lee
Siddle
Johnson
Roach
Edwards
Amir
Harris

all bowlers capable of bowling 150+ at will.... name another era where there were so many around? They are not all good bowlers, but they have certainly got the pace....it seems almost every Test playing country now has two of these 150+ bowlers knocking around...

Yet there are still people harping about Larwood making batsmen hop and skip in the bodyline series...but when i see the footage i'm mostly underwhelmed!

Agree with that. Most of those bowlers look medium pacers in footage but it could be due to the quality of footage.

 

[thierry henry]

No offence, but i'm almost 100% certain the biggest six must have been hit in the last 15 years...10 years even.

In debates like longest six, fastest bowler etc, invariably someone will bring up a player, who is porbably dead or close to it by now and say he did it better than anyone who has played the game since.

I find it incredibly hard to believe it.

Give me one athletic achievement that has stood the test of time or remained for over 100 years...in fact, almost all of them get bettered every 5 years or so.

That is how humans are.....In 2003 the PGA governing body had to step in to preserve the idea of hitting the ball long being a rarity. Yet we somehow think Cricket is so different that some granpa was able to hit it longer than anyone currently playing or was able to bowl faster than anyone who is currently playing.

We have better bats, bio-mechanical study etc, we can even bend our arms 15% when bowling now...and yet people think that back in the day players could hit the ball longer and bowl quicker?

Give me a break...

I'm sorry about the rant...had to get it off of my chest...

In 10 years we may have bowlers crossing 100 miles more often, and we'd probably still be saying Jeff Thomo was faster than all of them combined...

This is so obviously true, and yet people who claim to be knowledgeable about the game will still dispute it. Cricket is surely the only sport where fans will say with a straight face that players from "the old days" would beat current players and not get ridiculed. It's the weirdest thing.

 

[Flametree]

Give me one athletic achievement that has stood the test of time or remained for over 100 years...in fact, almost all of them get bettered every 5 years or so.

If the tale of athletic achievement is one of constant progress, can you please explain the current state of heavyweight boxing when compared with how it was almost 40 years ago in the mid-70s when Ali, Frasier, Foreman, Holmes and Norton were around?

If there were prize money or gold medals for bowling quickly then maybe people would strive for nothing more than bowling quickly. But to do well as a bowler you have to ally speed with accuracy and skill. In most disciplines athletes devote their whole lives to going faster or throwing further, but bowlers spend their lives trying to bowl better, not necessarily quicker.

I've been following cricket for almost 40 years, and in that time in New Zealand I can think of only one bowler (Shane Bond) who has bowled quicker than Richard Hadlee did in the mid 70's at a level of quality sufficient to actually have a career. Maybe Heath Davis on a good day. And those in the know reckon Bartlett was quicker than Hadlee (albeit testing that 15 degrees to the max). So I just don't accept that every decade bowlers are bowling faster than the decade previous. And I've no reason to believe that the bowlers in the 1950's were slower than those in the 60's and 70's or those in the 40's etc.