March 14, 1981 , Bridgetown, Barbados.

The first ball of Michael Holding’s over landed like a bomber, exploded from the pitch and ricocheted off Geoff Boycott’s arm to the second slip. The Yorkshireman did not quite see it.

The next one brushed past his stumps, scraping away part of the varnish. The thud into David Murray’s gloves was the only evidence of the ball being hurled down the pitch. No one quite saw it.

The third fourth and fifth balls climbed further, bit by bit. One brushed Boycott’s thigh, the next all but trimmed his chest hair. The fifth came closer to his throat than most razors do, and Boycott’s bat, for the first time in the over, managed to stop it … more as a means of self-preservation than a mode of batsmanship.

The last ball of the over was pitched full. As in the last five occasions, the opening batsman could not quite see it. It ripped his off-stump out of the ground, sending it cartwheeling in new found freedom.

Holding recalls in his biography Whispering Death, “The next thing I knew, bedlam had erupted all around the ground. For a split second, I was dazed. Boycott was not a batsman who was bowled very often and I certainly didn't expect I could hit his off stump like that. My view was blocked by his pads so I didn't see the stump cartwheeling out of the ground and only fully realised what had happened when Desmond Haynes rushed over from his position at short-leg to embrace me in congratulations and the slip fielders followed. I didn't even see Geoff making his way past me back to the pavilion.”

Most of those who witnessed the over believe it to be the fastest ever. All but Holding. The Jamaican speedster insists that he had bowled faster than that and often.

Text: Arunabha Sengupta

Illustration: Maha