Six balls, three big wickets and not a run on the board: India’s chase at Bay Oval began with Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer all dismissed for ducks. Matt Henry’s opening over on November 13 left India 0/3 against New Zealand, turning a target of 334 into an immediate survival test.
How the six-ball collapse unfolded
According to the ICC scorecard, the dismissals came on the first, fifth and sixth deliveries.
0.1 — Rohit Sharma: 0 from 1 ball, caught by Finn Allen off Henry.
0.5 — Virat Kohli: 0 from 4 balls, bowled Henry.
0.6 — Shreyas Iyer: 0 from 1 ball, LBW to Henry.
Ruturaj Gaikwad had not faced a delivery when the third wicket fell. Rohit and Iyer therefore had golden ducks; Kohli’s four-ball stay was a duck, but not a golden one. Henry’s sequence was W, dot, dot, dot, W, W. It was a three-wicket maiden, not a hat-trick.
Has an ODI begun this badly before?
Yes. A documented precedent is Sri Lanka against Bangladesh at Pietermaritzburg on February 14, 2003. Chaminda Vaas dismissed Hannan Sarkar, Mohammad Ashraful and Ehsanul Haque with the first three deliveries of that World Cup match. All three made ducks. Vaas then took another wicket in the same over, which Bangladesh finished at 5/4.
That example answers the first-over question, although its sequence was different: Vaas took a hat-trick, while Henry’s wickets were separated by three dot balls.
India’s 2023 scare had one important difference
At Chennai on October 8, 2023, India were 2/3 after two overs against Australia. Rohit, Ishan Kishan and Iyer were out without scoring. Kohli was part of the recovery alongside KL Rahul, and India won by six wickets.
The comparison is striking, but the timing matters: Chennai’s three ducks arrived across two overs; Bay Oval’s arrived within six balls. These are documented examples, rather than a claim that every ODI has been exhaustively ranked. The 2023 result also shows why an extraordinary opening collapse and the eventual result are separate stories. This article records the first-over episode, not the final outcome of the ongoing match.
