Darius Visser of Samoa broke the record for scoring the most runs in an over against Vanuatu on Tuesday in a T20 World Cup East Asia-Pacific Region Qualifier game in Apia. Darius Visser broke this record during his marvelous knock of 132 off 62 balls.
28-year-old Darius Visser, who is playing only the third T20I match of his career, scored 39 runs in an over of Nalin Nipiko by smashing six sixes. In men’s T20 Internationals, it was the fourth time a batsman had hit six sixes in an over and the first time a team had scored more than 36 runs in an over.
The record was broken during the fifteenth over of Samoa’s innings. Visser blasted Nipiko’s first three deliveries over the deep midwicket boundary, followed by a front-foot no-ball. The free-hit was smashed for six over the leg side, followed by a dot ball after Visser’s straight hit smacked the stumps at the non-striker’s end.
Nipiko overstepped for the second time in the over and bowled another no-ball, which Visser hit over fine leg for six. The last ball of the over was a low full toss outside off stump, which Visser flicked over deep square leg to conclude the over with 39 runs.
In men’s T20Is, there have been five other cases where a side has scored 36 runs in an over. The first time it happened was during the 2007 T20 World Cup when Yuvraj Singh of India smacked six sixes in an over of England’s Stuard Broad to become the first batsman to hit six sixes in an over in a T20 International match.
In 2021, Kieron Pollard of the West Indies accomplished the same feat against Akila Dananjaya of Sri Lanka, and Dipendra Singh Airee of Nepal did the same against Qatar’s Kamran Khan.
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The other two 36-run overs that did not include six sixes occurred in the 2024 T20 World Cup when the West Indies, with assistance from Nicholas Pooran, scored 36 against Afghanistan and when India’s Rohit Sharma and Rinku Singh combined to score 36 against Afghanistan in the same competition.
Darius Visser is the first Samoan batsman to score a century in T20Is. His tally of 14 sixes during his 132 runs innings is the fifth-best in the men’s T20 internationals. Out of Samoa’s 174 runs scored, his score of 132 was also the greatest percentage of runs scored by a batter in an inning by a team. Visser surpassed Australia’s Aaron Finch’s previous record of 75.1% by scoring 75.86% of his team’s runs.
According to a report in Sydney’s regional newspaper, “St George and Sutherland Shire Leader,” Visser was a fast bowler in his youth days in Sydney, but he had to turn to leg spin and batting due to chronic injuries and stress fractures.
