“WE WANT…?,” the DJ exclaimed as the match’s 39th over approached, when human energy levels should have been almost depleted. The question echoed around the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium.
“SIXER!” was the first cry from the wildly hungry Bengaluru crowd, who had seen 38 of them in only three hours—a (shared) record in the format.
The old-world excitement of the stroke that maximizes the batting outcome of a single delivery is still present in the real game. Each one elicits a well-known thrill response, with the only clue as to what the significance of that six in the overall game context being provided by the reaction’s decibel levels. As ball waves goodbye to bat, there’s a genuine ‘aaaah’. Then, bright eyes trace the route, necks twitch to see where the ball is going, mouths gape in surprise or amazement, or both, and hands shoot upward.
A few fans join in on the fun for a short while, cheering or making fun of the catcher or dropping among them before scurrying to be the first to toss the ball back onto the field to restart the game. Nothing, not even the newest camera angles or the incessantly animated commentary, can expect to fully convey via screens since there isn’t much in the sport quite like it.
Additionally, Monday saw a variety of sixes hit: flat hits that appeared destined to be four before they managed to overcome gravity long enough to cross the rope. ones that created the traditional parabola, slog-swept ones. There were sixes to every tier, straight sixes, reverse-swept sixes, and, of course, a six that got out of the stadium. And 38 of them were hammered for six every 5.5 minutes for the course of 206 minutes of batting.
For those who are not a part of the show, the six are now commonplace thanks to Twenty20 cricket. One could even legitimately bemoan their current quotidian status and the unbalanced bat-ball ratio. Based on this game and, implicitly, IPL 2024, sixes are becoming increasingly common. The reason why the modern player needs to have a decisive tactical edge is not so much because they can, but because they must. Even though the hosts struck five more fours in their pursuit, they were eventually short of 16 boundary runs as SRH outhit RCB with 22 sixes to 16. The final 25-run difference between the two teams may provide insight into what to expect from the game’s potential future iteration.
“The game is progressing so rapidly,” Glenn Maxwell said at a press conference following a game in which he was not actually involved. However, he was the star of the show at this time last year when RCB and CSK combined for 444 runs. At the conclusion of that match in Cricbuzz, enough column inches were devoted to the ‘balls per boundary’ ratio. One year later, a 549-run aggregate that broke all previous records encourages analysis of two distinct metrics: “balls per six” and the “fours to sixes” ratio.
The season’s six counter, which reached 500, was lost amidst the numerous records that were abandoned. In the 2024 Indian Premier League, a six is struck every 13.4 balls, compared to 14.6 balls in the previous edition at the same 25-game threshold. This year, there have been 1.5 more sixes hit per game on average. However, despite this spike, the overall boundary percentage [19.5% in 2023, 19.9% in 2024] has remained unchanged. Consequently, the ‘fours to sixes ratio’ of 1.67 appropriately indicates that more sixes are being hit at the expense of fours. Prior to previous year, it was 1.84 and 1.85, respectively.
In the event that the figures seem to be taking on a life of their own, the following is a little more palatable summary: With their six-y batting strategy in this match and the season overall, SRH seems to have furthered the T20 batting tenet. They have already smashed 77 sixes, ten more than the Mumbai Indians, the next top team. They also have the highest frequency of sixes (every 9.26 balls), and they have the lowest ‘fours to sixes’ ratio of any team at 1.19.
Having someone in the XI who has elevated six-hitting to an art form is beneficial. Of the 31 balls Heinrich Klaasen faced, seven found their way into the stands. With seven out of thirty-five, Dinesh Karthik almost tied him. However, SRH has assembled a lineup that has six batters who are all on the rise at the same time. Travis Head’s incredible 39-ball century included eight sixes, while Abhishek Sharma’s “only” two sixes on the evening leave him second only to colleague Klaasen in the total number of sixes.
A club with a large number of six-hitters will now consistently hit sixes. At face value, this may sound like a commonplace statement, yet hitting the ball in the air carries a chance of being caught for a dismissal. If his club doesn’t have the risk appetite, this might be enough of a deterrent for another competent batter on another team to choose the safer boundary choice. However, SRH’s lineup offers enough hitting potential for those in the above to continue taking the risk and trying to push the envelope of what’s feasible, something they have already done twice this season. A team that can turn the “4s into 6s” is more likely to win against another regular boundary-hitting side in an era of uniform pitches and approaches that have been refined over countless hours of range-hitting.
Strangely enough, batting is meant to be a reaction to a bowler’s action. But T20 cricket is rapidly approaching a stage when batting is just about deciding when and how best to strike a six. And in that sense, this game may be prophetic for members of the bowling clan, whose margin of error has been narrowing annually.
In Bengaluru, the only way out was to bowl hard and quick lengths and then mix it up with an impeccable yorker, but there aren’t enough bowlers in the world who can do this perfectly. And Pat Cummins was the only one in Bengaluru. Even yet, batters were ready to seize the opportunity if Cummins made even the slightest mistake, such as implying that 240 was a par score, straying from the hard length, or not moving quickly enough to reach it. Worldwide borders are insufficient, especially at places like Chinnaswamy, where the audience demanded and received a six, which was duly granted.
