Bridgetown: The big hitters have extra incentive to smash the bowling out of grounds, with a long-standing benchmark at stake and $1 million on offer for charity.

The Six Sixes challenge has been launched, with a tournament sponsor offering the $1 million for housing projects for the first batsman to hit six sixes in one over at the World Cup.

“These days we are seeing more and more big totals and sixes being hit in one-day cricket by powerful batsmen with big bats, yet no one has ever hit six sixes in one over of any international match,” said West Indies great Sir Viv Richards.

“The only people who have ever done it in first-class cricket are our own Gary Sobers and India’s Ravi Shastri and to me this tournament, with our traditionally short boundaries, is the time to change that.”

Sobers did it first, in an English county match for Nottinghamshire in 1968 when he hit six sixes in an over from Glamorgan’s Malcolm Nash at Swansea.

Richards, renowned as big hitter himself, issued a challenge to the likes of England’s batsmen Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen and Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi. “I know it is tough but what a great achievement it would be.”(AP)