Random Cricket Photos Post 65

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy

There are many knocks in cricket that people label 'once in a century' kind of knock. If I were to choose one such knock, I would go with this. Freak knock. Absolutely freak innings by Nathan Astle. Final innings. An almost insurmountable target of 550 and Astle pulls a rabbit out of the hat to score 222 from 168 balls.

The record of the fastest double hundred by balls that Astle made his own that day hasn't not been touched despite the advent of T20 cricket. However, one interesting bit of this record is that Astle, despite getting to the 200 mark in 153 balls, still remains second on the list of fastest double century scored by minutes.

The man on top of that list, who got to the mark in 214 minutes opposed to Astle's 217, is Sir Don Bradman who made the record his own on his way to his highest score of 334 in 1930. So, how did Bradman reach the mark three minutes earlier than Astle despite taking a lot more deliveries to get to his double ton?

Well, along with the 28 boundaries, Astle also hit 11 towering sixes on that day in his freak knock of 222. Two of those sixes resulted in the ball being lost and the umpires having to replace them. And that took time.

Bradman's tally of sixes in his entire career was 6. He didn't hit a single six in his knock of 334 against England in Headingley. Only 46 hits to the fence. And that's how Sir Donald Bradman, quite strangely, holds on to the record of the fastest double century by minutes that he established almost a century ago.