Watch: Heinrich Klaasen sent a ball out of the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, the six measured at 106 metres, the longest of the season till the point, before Dinesh Karthik bettered it with a 108-metre hit.
Subscribe to the Wisden Cricket YouTube channel for post-match analysis, player interviews, and much more.
Travis Head headlined SRH’s mammoth 287-3 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru on Monday (April 15) but Klaasen played an equally blistering knock, with his innings containing two fours and as many as seven sixes, the last of which was a huge 106-metre hit that went out of the ground in the 17th over.
Batting on 60 off 28 at that point, Klaasen was up against Lockie Ferguson, who made his debut for RCB in the match. The length ball, right in Klaasen’s arc, was lofted for a straight drive by the South Africa batter, over the boundary rope and then out of the ground for a huge six. It was the joint-longest six of the competition till then, with Nicholas Pooran and Venkatesh Iyer hitting 106-metre sixes earlier in the competition too.
The record was broken soon after, with Karthik turning on the heat in the second half. He was 16 off 11 at the end of the 13th over and made 67 in the next 24 balls en route to a 35-ball 83. His innings also had seven sixes, including a big 108-metre maximum, which he hit against T Natarajan.
The first ball of the 16th over was on the pads and Karthik slammed it for a huge boundary that bounced back from the roof into the ground.
Karthik’s knock helped RCB reach close to SRH’s target but they fell 25 runs short in the end.
