KYLE’S SIX AND OTHER HITS –
Trent Bridge Highlights
The sight of Kyle Verreynne hoicking the ball over deep mid-wicket to give Notts a crucial batting point and confirm them as 2025 County Champions will go down in the Club’s history as one of the most memorable six hits seen on this famous ground.
And it set us thinking about other great sixes seen at Trent Bridge. The collective minds of the Heritage volunteers soon came up with a list of the ‘best’ (or most memorable). Starting, of course, with that six in September 2025.
2025 Kyle Verreynne:
Warwickshire were the visitors and made 258. Notts responded with 374, led from the front by skipper ‘Has’ who made a vital 122. The crucial moment came during a barnstorming partnership between keeper Verreynne and spin bowler Patterson-White. Notts needed to pass 300 and get a crucial batting bonus point to be sure of finishing as champions.
Just as he had predicted in interviews that morning, Verreynne scored the 300th run, crashing the ball over the ropes for a six!
Notts went on to win the game and celebrate clinching the title on their home ground – the first Championship for 15 years and the first since 1981 to be confirmed at home.
2024 Shamar Joseph ‘Heads up’:
Quite a few of these six hit memories will feature tailenders (usually quick bowlers) starring with bat rather than ball. One such was West Indies seamer Shamar Joseph in the Test of 2024. In the course of making a swashbuckling 33, thus giving his side a narrow first innings lead, Joseph – who bats left handed but bowls right – pulled a mighty six into the Larwood & Voce stand. So hard did he hit it that on impact, broken roof tiles were scattered onto the fans below. Thankfully, no-one was seriously hurt.
2022 Daryl Mitchell into fan’s pint:
Another six that disturbed the crowd was in the 2022 Test versus New Zealand. Though most remember Jonny Bairstow’s explosive 136, with seven sixes, it was a six scored by the visitor’s Daryl Mitchell that landed the most telling blow. He clubbed a straight six into the spectators in the Pavilion seats…and straight into one poor chap’s pint of beer!
2017 Alex Hales into BBC box:
Straight sixes seem to feature a lot in this roll call and in 2017, during a T20 game against Durham, opener Alex Hales scored a rapid century that included one hefty six that sailed up and on...and on...and through the open window of the BBC Radio Commentary Box!
Notts commentator Dave Bracegirdle was on the mike at the time and his, slightly (and understandably) frantic, commentary is now the stuff of legend.
Listen to Dave's commentary here
2016 Liam Plunkett ties ODI:
Another fabulous straight six stands clear in the memory of Heritage Volunteer Peter Smith, who was in the crowd with his Australian niece for the 2016 ODI vs Sri Lanka. “England were chasing and, despite Nineties by Buttler and Woakes, were always a little behind the target”, he recalls.
“It got to the last over; Woakes and Plunkett needed to somehow find 14 runs to win the game. Some superb yorker bowling and some scrambled running meant that off the last ball of the match, they needed six to tie.
“Plunkett hit the ball just to the off side of straight and as it arced through the floodlit sky towards the Pavilion, the crown was going up with the ball!
“The roar when it cleared the ropes was more like a win than a tie”.
2008 Murray Goodwin snatches Sussex win:
Notts were on the wrong end of a dramatic finish in 2008. Sussex Sharks came to Trent Bridge for a Pro40 game with the title in the balance. Chasing 227, they were struggling at 130-8 but an enterprising partnership of 99 between Pakistan bowler Mohammed Sami and New Zealand batter Murray Goodwin saw them to the brink.
They still needed 16 off the final over, bowled by Charlie Shreck, and three off the final ball, but Shreck pitched it up and Goodwin launched into the stands at long-on.
The Pro40 title was theirs; skipper Chris Adams, said "It doesn't matter how long you play this game, it always retains the capacity to surprise you”, a sentiment that Notts fans and players – eagerly anticipating a win – would certainly endorse.
2005 Brett Lee hits over L&V?:
Big hitting in a lost cause can still be impressive – as Brett Lee would surely agree. In the 2005 Ashes Test, he took a liking to fellow quick bowler Steve Harmison and clubbed a couple of sixes. There was a minor dispute among the heritage ‘brains trust’ as to whether his sixes sailed over the Larwood and Voce stand (avoiding any damage to roof tiles) or the Fox Road stand – in fact it was both!
1998 Not Flintoff:
An AXA League game was played against Lancashire on 9 September 1998 – the first game under floodlights (temporary ones) at TB. The story of one shot in that match has formed part of tour guide Alan Odell’s patter; he tells the story:
“A player hit a six into the newly opened Radcliffe Road stand that smashed one of the hospitality box patio windows.”
It was such a typical Freddie Flintoff shot that Alan told visitors that Freddie was the culprit but that soon needed a correction.
“I heard later (from John Ellison, shop manager) that he thought it was Mike Watkinson”, said Alan.
“I asked Mike a few years later, when he was coaching Lancs, and he said he couldn’t remember as he had hit so many sixes in his career.
“However, at a book signing, Flintoff confirmed it was his mate “Winky” aka Mike Watkinson.
“Just shows that even if you were at a game (I was sat in the old Parr Stand) you don’t always remember the facts correctly!
1978 Kevin Cooper v Derbyshire:
Mike Goulder, another Heritage Volunteer, remembered Kevin Cooper hitting a six off Derbyshire’s Eddie Barlow to win a JPL match by two wickets.
“Basher's benefit match (former all-rounder and past Club President Basharat Hassan) in 1978 in front of 8,000 springs to my mind.
“The match was reduced to 38 overs per side and Notts restricted Derbyshire to 208-7. In reply they had stumbled to 204-8 with two balls to go when seamer Kevin Cooper hit his one scoring shot – a six to snatch the win.”
1965: Andy Corran wins match:
On 11 June, Andy Corran needed to hit the final ball of the Essex championship game at Trent Bridge for three to give Notts a two wicket Championship victory. With nine fielders positioned on the boundary and tremendous excitement in the crowd, Corran hit Barry Knight for a towering six to win the match.
These super sixes all happened within living memory but there will, surely, have been many more that the records do not show. And almost all, with the probable exception of Brett Lee’s efforts, might not have been sixes if hit before 1910.
Up to then, a six could only be scored if the ball was ‘hit out of the ground’. Which gives us cause to wonder about some of the famous hitting of the past.
George Parr, ‘Lion of the North’, is famed for hitting an ancient elm tree that stood just inside the ground on the Bridgford Road side so often that it was known as ‘Parr’s Tree’. But if it was inside the ground, even though beyond the boundary, then perhaps none of his great hits would have been sixes (the scorecards of the mid-1800s are scarce).
Similarly, a monster hit by the notorious stonewaller William Scotton in 1880 would probably only have been four. This despite him hitting the ball some 97 yards onto the balcony of the (old) Pavilion. If it didn’t clear the building, it must have stayed within Trent Bridge, so no six.
We can, though, credit Jimmy Iremonger with the first six at Trent Bridge under new rules that said the ball had only to cross the boundary without touching the ground to count six.
Against Surrey in the first home game of the 1910 season, Iremonger hit one six (the records do not say what the stroke was). Remarkably, his six came in the Notts second innings, yet towards the end of day one, Notts and Surrey each having been bowled out in the first innings, for 69 and 65 respectively.
For the record, Ted Alletson – who a year later was to break all sorts of records scoring 189 vs Sussex (including eight sixes) – scored the second six, on day two as Notts wrapped up a two-day win.
Six hits are far more common now with white-ball competitions, bigger bats and smaller boundaries and there are six hitting exploits that didn’t quite make our list.
Alex Hales once hit six consecutive sixes but across two overs, so he didn’t quite make the record books. Liam Livingstone hit nine sixes in making what was then England’s fastest T20 century, in 2021 in the first International at Trent Bridge as the Covid restrictions were relaxed.
West Indian Keiran Pollard hit a ball into the top tier of the Radcliffe Road stand and James Taylor hit five sixes in his 146no against Derbyshire in a 2014 Royal London Cup tie.
'Tich' Taylor made a late bid to get onto the list by telling the October meeting of the Nottingham Cricket Lovers Society (NCLS) that he won a game for Shrewsbury School v Harrow at Trent Bridge by hitting the penultimate ball for six to the Bridgford Road side of the ground. We can't verify that as the scorecard is not online but it's too good a story not to use.
All great examples of six hitting and we’d love to hear of any other memories of six hits at Trent Bridge; email us at heritage@trentbridge.co.uk.
October 2025