IPL Has Space For Only One Thing: A Big Swing

As IPL administrators push for a game where every ball results in a boundary, is there any hope for the art of bowling?

- Rudraneil Sengupta

To begin, a simple prediction—the first 300-plus score in the IPL will be scored this season. Who will bet against this? On 22 March, in Sunrisers Hyderabad's (SRH's) game in Hyderabad against Rajasthan Royals (RR), the home team amassed 286 runs, on the back of 12 sixes and 34 boundaries in 20 overs—nearly a boundary every second ball for the duration of the innings.

Such is the ease with which batters have hammered bowlers, that RR managed 242 in the chase. This was not even the highest score in the IPL, which is also held by SRH, when they hit 287 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) last season.

The IPL, which sets the standards for T20 cricket in the world, and, by extension, all cricket, is becoming more and more frenzied when it comes to big-hitting. For many years since its inception in 2008, powerplay scores in the IPL have hovered around 60—last season, it averaged nearly 75. Nine of the top 10 innings totals in the IPL were made in the last season and this season. Two hundred plus totals have become the norm.

There is no doubt about it; ever since T20 came into the picture, the focus for cricket's administrators, tirelessly pushed on by the broadcasters, has been to make it a six-hitting carnival of ever-increasing high scores. Pitches have gotten flatter and more even paced (anything that does not play by the big-hitting rulebook is immediately fixed), grounds are smaller, bats are bigger and heavier, and fielding restrictions as well as the "impact player" rule introduced in the 2023 season of IPL, where a team can introduce one substitute per match for either batting or bowling purposes—teams overwhelmingly use this to give an extra batter a go—have made the IPL a bowler's nightmare.