Dimitri Mascarenhas Hits Yuvraj Back — 5 Sixes Off One Over

The summer of 2007 was cricket's year of the six. In September of that year, two extraordinary six-hitting feats occurred within weeks of each other, connected by the person of Yuvraj Singh in ways that the cricket gods had clearly planned with considerable care. First, Yuvraj hit Stuart Broad for six sixes in an over at the T20 World Cup in Durban — one of the most extraordinary individual batting performances in the game's history. Then, in the subsequent NatWest Series at The Oval, Yuvraj found himself on the receiving end of five sixes in a single over, delivered by an England all-rounder that the cricket world had largely forgotten to take seriously.

Dimitri Mascarenhas was a capable, uncelebrated England all-rounder — born in England to Sri Lankan parents, a useful seamer for Hampshire and a lower-order batsman who could hit the ball hard when required. He was not, in anyone's pre-match assessment, the person who was going to have a significant impact on a major international match. He was the kind of player who makes up the numbers and occasionally does something useful; he was not the kind of player who rewrites the match narrative in a single over.

The NatWest Series match at The Oval was heading towards a routine India win when Mascarenhas came to the crease with England requiring something extraordinary. What he provided was, by any measure, extraordinary — and the fact that he did it specifically to Yuvraj, specifically in 2007, specifically weeks after the Broad incident, elevated it from a cricket moment to a piece of cosmic comedy.

England were in trouble in the final over of their innings, needing a substantial amount off the last six balls to give themselves a chance. Mascarenhas was batting, Yuvraj was bowling his left-arm spin, and the match appeared to be heading in one direction. The numbers didn't make sense for England. The situation didn't make sense for England. The choice of bowler was, with hindsight, the universe preparing a punchline.

What happened next defied all pre-match analysis, all on-the-day analysis, and the specific personal history of the man bowling. Mascarenhas launched five of the six deliveries for six — not in the classic slog-sweep or heave, but in the clean, confident hitting of a batsman who had suddenly found the perfect timing for a particular type of bowling in a particular situation. The ball left the bat with authority, cleared the boundary with ease, and landed in the crowd with the kind of regularity that suggested a plan rather than fortune.

Yuvraj's face during this over became a short film in itself — a progression through phases of disbelief that mapped perfectly onto his feelings about the situation. He had, two weeks earlier, been on the other side of exactly this experience. He had watched Stuart Broad's face go through its own phases of disbelief as he took six sixes. Now, at The Oval, with the cricket world watching and absolutely noting the irony, the roles were reversed.

The cricket world was still buzzing about Yuvraj Singh's six sixes off Stuart Broad in the 2007 T20 World Cup when karma decided to make a personal appearance wearing an England kit. In the subsequent ODI series between England and India at The Oval, Dimitri Mascarenhas — of all people — smashed Yuvraj himself for five sixes in a single over. The universe's sense of humor was functioning perfectly.

The irony was delicious. Yuvraj, who had just days earlier demolished Broad for 36 runs in an over, was now on the receiving end of almost identical treatment. Mascarenhas, a solid but largely unheralded all-rounder whose career highlight was being Hampshire's best player (an achievement roughly equivalent to being the tallest building in a village), launched Yuvraj's left-arm spin to all parts of The Oval. Five of the six balls went for six, with the other being a dot ball — one ball's difference from matching Yuvraj's record.

The expressions were priceless — Yuvraj looked like a man who'd just learned what his own medicine tasted like, and it was bitter. His face cycled through several stages of disbelief, as if the universe was playing a practical joke that only he couldn't see the humor in. Meanwhile, Mascarenhas celebrated with the bemused air of a man who couldn't quite believe what he was doing, which was fair enough because nobody else could believe it either.

The commentary team couldn't stop referencing the Broad incident, drawing parallels with the glee of people who had been waiting for exactly this kind of cosmic justice. Cricket, as they say, is a great leveller, and this was the proof — served up in The Oval's south London sunshine.

“I just kept hitting them. I don't know what happened. Everything seemed to go right.”

“The irony was obvious. Everyone felt it. Even Yuvraj, I think, could see the funny side eventually.”

“Cricket has a way of levelling people. Yuvraj had done it to Broad, and now it was happening to Yuvraj. That's the game.”

“Mascarenhas probably had more impact in that one over than in the rest of his England career combined. Cricket is strange like that.”

Mascarenhas's five sixes became the defining moment of his international career — a fact that he accepted with good grace, given that the defining moment in question was genuinely spectacular. He continued playing for England and Hampshire but nothing else in his career approached the cosmic significance of that Oval over.

Yuvraj, for his part, took the karmic hit with the composure of someone who had, two weeks earlier, done exactly this to Stuart Broad. He could hardly complain about the universe maintaining its accounting. The Broad incident had made Yuvraj a global cricketing hero; the Mascarenhas over reminded him, and everyone else, that cricket is an equaliser.