Lhuan-dre Pretorius has broken the record for the highest score in a men's Twenty20 match, making 188 not out from 79 deliveries for the Titans against the Knights in South Africa's CSA T20 Challenge.
The 20-year-old South African's innings contained 13 sixes and 15 fours, and carried the Titans to 267 for three at the Mangaung Oval in Bloemfontein.
The previous record had stood since 2013, when Chris Gayle made 175 for Royal Challengers Bangalore, now Bengaluru, against Pune Warriors in the Indian Premier League.
The record covers all men's T20 cricket, international and domestic alike, and is counted by runs in a single innings, which is how a Friday night domestic fixture comes to displace an Indian Premier League mark that had stood for thirteen years.
Pretorius finished with a strike rate of 237.97. He reached his half-century from 24 balls, needed only 16 more deliveries to reach three figures, and was at 150 from 58 balls.
An innings in the 20-over format is limited to 120 deliveries a side. Pretorius faced 79 of them.
The Titans then bowled the Knights out for 143 and won by 124 runs.
Pretorius has played 17 T20 internationals, three one-day internationals and two Tests for South Africa, and has made a century in both Test and T20 cricket for his country.
The record was set in a domestic fixture on Friday rather than in the kind of franchise tournament that produced the previous one.
The CSA T20 Challenge is South Africa's domestic competition in the 20-over format, contested between the country's franchise sides, of which the Titans and the Knights are two.
Of the Titans' 267 for three, Pretorius made 188. Everything else in the innings, his team-mates and the extras together, came to 79.
The scorecard invites a comparison that cricket's record-keeping declines to make, and this newspaper proposes to make it.
Pretorius made 188. The Knights, batting eleven men, made 143. On the only measure the match itself used, one player outscored an entire team by 45 runs.
The Knights fielded ten more participants than Pretorius and finished 45 runs behind him, a deficit of four and a half runs for every additional player. Each man they added made the position worse.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has considered whether the Titans were therefore over-staffed. Pretorius faced 79 of the 120 deliveries available and was unbeaten at the close, which means his innings was ended by the format rather than by the opposition.
No bowler dismissed him. No fielder caught him. He was removed from the match by a rule about how long the match lasts.
South Africa's selectors now face a question of resourcing rather than of form. Eleven players produced 143. One produced 188. The arithmetic is not ambiguous, and the only obstacle to acting on it is the regulation requiring a side to field a team.