A NEW ERA FOR SIX-HITTING

With the increasing trend of batters, especially young uncapped Indians, taking to six-hitting like fish to sea, Swaroop Swaminathan and Gomesh S take a deep dive to understand the trend, the reasons for it and how they have been able to do that.

- Swaroop Swaminathan and Gomesh S

THE sheer thrill of a six has remained undiminished. Sure, there's a separate fanbase for an inswinging yorker breaching through the batter's defences before hitting the stumps. But, geez, the six. Pure theatre whether it's book cricket, inside the confines of your bedroom, gully cricket or at the elite level in front of 50,000 people. It's the ultimate expression of hedonism with a bat. A batter's wet dream.

In this year's Indian Premier League (IPL), that dream has played itself on an endless loop. After the 18th match - aptly decided by a straight six by Nitish Kumar Reddy - 326 maximums have been struck. You extrapolate that figure across the 74 games and you get 1332 sixes, 208 better than the previous best of 1124 in 2023 which also had the same number of matches.

This isn't just to say that the league is witnessing more number of sixes than before. In fact, as soon as the league expanded to 10 teams, it was a given. But it's that the league is seeing sixes being hit at an unprecedented (perhaps even unsustainable) rate.

The numbers back this. In the league's inaugural edition in 2008, teams, on average, hit one six every 3.3 overs (20.95 balls to be exact). This figure has gone up (it was once every 2.4 overs in 2018) or gone down (3.2 overs in 2021). Over the last three years, though, six-hitting has been weaponized on an industrial scale. In 2024, it has never been better. Teams are hitting one six every 12.9 deliveries. It's an improvement of 2.3 balls over the previous best of 15.3 in 2023. Six-hitting's own Anthropocene may be here.