Gareth Morgan (centre) and his Mudgeeraba team-mates – Facebook
A cricketing miracle took place in the sleepy surrounds of the Gold Coast Premier League Division Three as Mudgeeraba captain Gareth Morgan took six wickets in six balls to pull off the unlikeliest of heists.
Chasing 179, Surfers Paradise went into the final over of the match last weekend needing just five runs to win, with local sports reporter Jake Garland unbeaten on 65 not out.
But Morgan dismissed Garland, caught on the boundary with the first ball of the final over, and chaos ensued, with batsmen No 7 to 11 all falling for golden ducks, to hand Mudgeeraba victory by four runs.
“It is funny, the umpire said to me at the start of the over that I needed to take a hat-trick or something to win the game,” Morgan told the Gold Coast Bulletin, where Garland works.
“When it happened he just sort of looked at me.”
Garland was able to see the funny side.
“I mean all you can really do now is laugh about it,” he wrote on X. “Always wanted to be part of history with sport somehow, didn’t think it would be for this reason.”
Bowler once took five in an over as well
Morgan, who had earlier top-scored with the bat, had pulled off a similar feat as a youngster, according to his father.
“A proud father here,” Huw Morgan wrote on Facebook. “Gareth won’t tell you, but as a young bloke, he once took five wickets in an over! He didn’t get six, because there was only five wickets left at the start of the over.”
Morgan revealed he had been so resigned to defeat that he only bowled to spare a young player the indignity of having the winning runs hit off them.
“I didn’t want to let the winning runs come off the younger bowlers because they had bowled so well and I didn’t want them to be down on themselves for it, if it was to happen,” Morgan said.
“I knew I had a few overs spare up my sleeve, so I decided to bowl from that end and give one of our young quicks the other end.”
Records suggest that no bowler has ever taken six wickets in a single first-class over, although New Zealand’s Neil Wagner took five in an over for Otago in 2011.
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