The most dangerous over in the history of cricket, a fight for supremacy in 6 balls, then there was a ruckus between 2 all-rounders.

New Delhi. Most of the innings played on the 22-yard strip and explosive batting are mentioned, but as soon as we look at the history of cricket and remember the performance of the bowlers, some spells come to our mind which become immortal forever. Whenever we talk about the most dangerous battle between the ball and the bat, then in our mind we have Wahab Riaz and Shane Watson, Allan Donald and Mike Atherton, or Mitchell Johnson and Virat Kohli. Those intense matches of Kohli go round and round, but let us turn the wheel of time back a little and move towards that historic clash, which had taken Test cricket to a different level.

On one side stood Jacques Kallis, the greatest all-rounder of all time, known as the ‘Wall of South Africa’, and on the other side was the biggest hero of England’s 2005 Ashes winning team, one of the best all-rounder Andrew Flintoff. This was a contest between two all-rounders with super-star status, or rather, a battle for supremacy that would decide who was the best among them.

That chaotic match in Birmingham

The over bowled by Andrew Flintoff to Jacques Kallis during the third Test match played at Edgbaston (Birmingham) ground in England in 2008 is still considered to be the most dangerous and tremendous over in the history of cricket. That stormy pace, killer bouncers and incoming balls of Flintoff had brought even a batsman like the great Kallis to his knees. Even a strong batsman like Kallis looked helpless at the crease at that time.

Unique mixture of bouncer and yorker

During the same historic over, there came a moment when a very fast and in-swinger ball from Flintoff went straight to Kallis’s toe. The entire stadium and the England team echoed with the appeal. It seemed clear that Kallis was out, but the umpire, Pakistan’s veteran Aleem Dar, declared Kallis not out. However, the replay clearly showed that the ball had hit the stumps directly. If there was ‘DRS’ i.e. Decision Review System like today, then Kallis would have had to return to the pavilion. Even though umpire Aleem Dar had given him not out, but that magical spell of Flintoff and the fiery balls got his name registered in the pages of history forever. When even Kellis had no answer to his precise yorker, Kellis’s bats went flying in the air. This was not just one over, but it was a classic battle of Test cricket, which even today viewers are forced to bite their teeth.