Yuvraj Singh Smashes Stuart Broad for 6 Sixes in an Over

The 2007 ICC World Twenty20 was the inaugural T20 World Cup, held in South Africa. The tournament was treated with some skepticism by cricket's establishment — many saw T20 as a gimmick rather than a genuine format. India had not even been enthusiastic about entering, with the BCCI initially lukewarm about the concept. The senior players had been rested for the tournament, and a relatively young squad was sent under MS Dhoni's captaincy.

Yuvraj Singh, however, was anything but junior. By 2007, he was one of India's most important limited-overs players — a swashbuckling left-hander who had played match-winning innings in World Cups and had a reputation as one of the cleanest strikers in world cricket. He was also famously hot-headed, with a competitive fire that could turn incandescent when provoked.

Stuart Broad, by contrast, was a fresh-faced 21-year-old on his first major international tour. He was the son of former England opener Chris Broad, and he had the gangly look of a teenager who hadn't quite grown into his frame. He would go on to become one of England's greatest ever bowlers, but on this evening in Durban, he was simply the unfortunate recipient of Yuvraj Singh's rage.

What triggered one of cricket's most entertaining moments was actually a sledging incident. Andrew Flintoff had exchanged words with Yuvraj Singh during the previous over, and the Indian all-rounder was fuming. The confrontation was heated enough that umpires had to intervene. Flintoff, with all the self-awareness of a man juggling chainsaws near a fireworks factory, had just poked one of cricket's most explosive batsmen. When young Stuart Broad came on to bowl the next over, Yuvraj decided to take out his frustration on the hapless bowler.

What followed was pure, undiluted carnage. Six balls, six sixes. Yuvraj smashed Broad to all parts of Kingsmead, Durban. The first six went over midwicket with contemptuous ease. The second soared over long-on. The third disappeared over cover. By the fourth, Broad's face had assumed the expression of a man who had accidentally wandered into a firing range. The fifth was a flat-batted drive that nearly decapitated a spectator in the stands. The sixth — the one that completed the feat and sealed the fastest fifty in T20I history — was almost anticlimactic by comparison, sailing over long-off with the casual inevitability of a sunset.

Poor Broad's figures for that over read 0-36, and his face told the story of a man who wanted the ground to swallow him whole. The 20-year-old fast bowler had been thrown into the deep end by his captain, and the deep end had turned out to be full of sharks. Broad bowled gamely enough — it wasn't as if he was serving up pies — but Yuvraj was operating on a different plane of existence. He was hitting balls that would have been good deliveries against any other batsman in history, depositing them into the stands as if swatting flies.

Yuvraj's celebration was pure Bollywood — arms spread wide, drinking in the adulation of the Indian fans who had made Durban sound like Mumbai. The fastest fifty in T20I history was completed in just 12 balls, with the six sixes reaching the landmark. The over has been watched hundreds of millions of times on YouTube and remains the most replayed moment in T20 cricket history. Broad, to his credit, went on to have a stellar career — taking over 600 Test wickets and becoming one of England's greatest ever bowlers — but he has never quite lived down those 36 runs. Every interviewer, at some point, asks him about it. Every cricket fan, upon meeting him, mentions it. It is his inescapable cross, his sporting albatross.

“Flintoff got into me, and I decided the next over was going to go. I didn't care who was bowling — he was going to pay.”

“I've used that over as motivation for the rest of my career. If you can survive that, you can survive anything.”

“When Yuvraj hit the fourth six, I knew the rest were coming. There was no stopping him.”

The six sixes turned Yuvraj into a T20 legend overnight. India went on to win the inaugural T20 World Cup, defeating Pakistan in a thrilling final, and the tournament that the BCCI had been lukewarm about became the catalyst for the creation of the Indian Premier League the following year.

Broad was understandably devastated but showed remarkable maturity for a 21-year-old, refusing to hide from the media. He later used the experience as motivation, channeling the humiliation into a career that saw him take 604 Test wickets. In a beautiful irony, Broad's career far exceeded anything Yuvraj achieved in the longest format of the game.

The over changed T20 cricket's commercial trajectory. The BCCI, watching Yuvraj's sixes and hearing the roar of the crowd, saw dollar signs. Within months, the IPL was announced. It is no exaggeration to say that those six balls, more than any other single moment, convinced Indian cricket's administrators that T20 was the future.