South Africa-born Neil Wagner took an unprecedented five wickets in one over in a first-class domestic cricket competition Wednesday. Wagner, a 25-year-old left-arm fast bowler for New Zealand's Otago, achieved his feat just before lunch in the Plunket Shield match against Wellington. Wellington began the over on 136-4 chasing Otago's first innings of 441-8 declared, but the visitors ended the over at 136-9.
Wagner had opener Stewart Rhodes caught for 77, then bowled Justin Austin-Smellie, Jeetan Patel and Illi Tugaga for first-ball ducks. Mark Gillespie survived the next delivery before falling to the last ball of the over. Wellington was bowled out for 148 and Wagner had a career-best 6-36, lifting his season total to 48 wickets. The previous best performance in an over by a bowler in New Zealand was in 1929-30 when Englishman Maurice Allom took four wickets in five balls against New Zealand in a test match at Lancaster Park in Christchurch.
That feat has been achieved two other times in Tests, the most recent by Wasim Akram of Pakistan against the West Indies in Lahore in the 1990-91 season. A check of the International Cricket Council website and the Wisden online archive at the Cricinfo website indicated that statistics on the number of wickets in one over are apparently not kept.
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