A county league match in Staffordshire moved from routine Saturday cricket to statistical folklore when Penkridge fast bowler Myles Davis produced one of the rarest bowling bursts the game can offer.
Davis took six wickets in six consecutive legal deliveries against Pelsall in the Premier Division of the Staffordshire County League, turning a chase that was still alive into an innings that collapsed almost before anyone could understand what was happening.
Myles Davis takes six wickets in six balls
Penkridge had not built the sort of total that usually guarantees control. They were bowled out for 168 after choosing to bat first, leaving Pelsall with a realistic target. At 49-2 after eight overs, the visitors were still in the contest. The equation was demanding but manageable, and there was no sign yet that the match was about to become a rare entry in cricket’s record books.
Then Davis changed the match in six balls.
The right-arm quick struck with the last two deliveries of one over and then took four more wickets with the first four balls of his next. Pelsall went from 49-2 to 49-9 without adding a run during that spell, before being bowled out for 52. Penkridge completed a 116-run win, but the result became secondary to the manner in which it arrived.
Davis finished with figures of 7-16 from six overs, having already picked up one wicket before the six-ball burst. For a club game, it was the kind of sequence that travels far beyond the boundary rope. Six wickets in six balls belong to a different scale altogether. It is not merely a spell; it is an innings being torn open in real time.
The achievement carried another striking detail. Davis, an electrician, was only able to play because a colleague agreed to cover his shift. A small act of workplace help ended up making space for one of cricket’s most extraordinary bowling feats.
“It’s still a bit surreal, but it’s an amazing achievement,” Davis told BBC Midlands.
“I didn’t know what to think, to be honest. When the fourth happened, I was just amazed, and it just carried on. I couldn’t believe it.”
Penkridge chairman John Price told the BBC that the club understood the feat to be only the seventh known instance of six wickets in six balls anywhere in the world. He also said Davis was believed to be the first adult male in the UK to achieve it.
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“So it’s a massive achievement, and we’re super proud. He’s one of our own homegrown juniors coming through, so hats off to him,” Price said.
Davis had already taken two hat-tricks last season, but even that does little to normalise what happened against Pelsall. Wickets in clusters can happen in club cricket. Batting collapses can be brutal. But six wickets from six balls is more than unbelievable.
“A shout-out to my work colleague who covered me so I could actually play,” Davis said. “I don’t think there’s any topping that. I just have to try my best for the rest of the season. If it was to happen again, it would be a miracle.”
For Penkridge, a modest first-innings total became more than enough. For Davis, a Saturday shift swap became the doorway to a once-in-a-lifetime spell.