Australian club cricketer who made world headlines has a strong Welsh connection!
He’s the talk of world cricket and has a strong Welsh connection!
The story of Gareth Morgan’s six wickets in six balls to win a match for Australian side Mudgeeraba on Saturday has gone global.
After Grassroots North Wales contacted the player today, it emerged his father, Huw Morgan, is a Welshman from Tongwynlais, near Cardiff.
The Morgans still have relatives living in the Welsh capital and surrounding area. Huw moved to Australia with his family at the age of nine.
Third-grade cricketer Gareth’s amazing feat took place in the humble surroundings of the Carrara Community Centre on Australia’s Gold Coast.
Gareth was captain of the Mudgeeraba Nerang and Districts Cricket Club against Surfers Paradise in the Gold Coast’s Premier League division three when he took the six wickets in the final over of the match.
Surfers Paradise had 174 runs for the loss of four wickets and needed five runs to win.
Off the first ball, Gareth had opener Jake Garland caught at mid-wicket for 65 trying to win the game with one hit.
The next two batsmen were out caught too, giving the skipper a hat-trick.
Another batter was caught at point, then Gareth applied the coup de grace, bowling his last two victims to complete the perfect over.
Gareth said: “When I saw the stumps go back on the last ball I couldn’t believe it — I’ve never seen anything like it.
“Everyone was going wild. It was incredible, I don’t think anyone could believe it had happened.”
The most wickets taken in an over of professional cricket is five, achieved three times — New Zealand’s Neil Wagner for Otago in 2011; Al-Amin Hossain for a Bangladesh Cricket Board XI in 2013; and Abhimanyu Mithun for Indian state side Karnataka in 2019.
Gareth added: “It was a crazy afternoon! My father is Welsh, from Tongwynlais. We still have family living there and around Cardiff, so there were also a few happy Welsh people around when they discovered what had happened.”
Tongwynlais is a village and community in the north of Cardiff, north of the M4 motorway in the Taff Valley. It is notable as the location of the hillside landmark, Castell Coch. The population as of the 2011 census was 1871.