IPL turns 18: 2024 witnessed an unprecedented 1260 sixes, one every 13 balls – what’s in store this year? | Ipl News

Even the modern standards of the T20 game, no franchise league has witnessed as breathtaking an expansion in batting dynamics as the IPL over the last three seasons. The format still reserves sensitivity to its bowlers in leagues in other countries. The collective batting strike rate in South Africa’s recent pet project, SA20, has yet to soar past 135 in three seasons. It has taken 14 editions of the Big Bash League in Australia for the batters to jot the same mark earlier this year.
But the flatbeds, ranging from Delhi to Bengaluru, have contributed to a phenomenal change in the T20 psyche in India since last year. The IPL 2024 season bore an unprecedented 1260 sixes, one every 13 balls, with runners-up SunRisers Hyderabad setting forth a revolution with 178 maximums.
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The transformation is remarkably intense when placed beside the IPL’s maiden summer in 2008, where only 622 sixes were struck in 58 matches, taking 21 balls per hit.
The 250-run mark was breached eight times in the 2004 tournament, exponentially adding to the two instances from all the 16 preceding years combined. As eventual champions Kolkata Knight Riders and SRH turbo-charged the pons to a whole new dimension, their rivals had no choice but to adapt.
Sample this surge in strike rates – batting ‘intent’ – the IPL has seen since the return of the 10-team format. 2022: 133.94. 2023: 141.71. 2024: 150.58.
For nearly the same number of balls sent down in the tournament in 70-plus games through each of the last three seasons, the IPL 2024 edition gained 18 runs more for every 100 deliveries bowled than in 2022. While it may not hold the limelight on the big-ticket nights like last year’s low-scoring final in Chennai, six-hitting has layered this cornerstone of IPL batsmanship. Story continues below this ad
As much as it is a terrifying prospect for the bowling group, the batters are feeling the heat too. The pressure to smash consent 200-plus totals on belters can be taxing and relieving at the same time.
Delhi Capitals batters Shai Hope and Tran Stubbs celebrate their win in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 T20 cricket match between Lucknow Super Giants and Delhi Capitals at Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Stadium, Lucknow, Friday, April 12, 2024. (PTI Photo/Vijay Verma)
“It can free you up sometimes. Sometimes, you can look at the scoreboard and feel you need to get a lot more than you need to. It’s all about trying to find a balance when out there. Until you’re out there, it always feels like a long way away,” explains Delhi Capitals batter Tran Stubbs, who smoked 26 sixes last season.
Having played on “spicy” wickets in the SA20, where runs aren’t rationed freely in sixes, Stubbs admits to the pressure of unrelenting hitting on the batter in the IPL.
“The scoreboard pressure, when these guys score the 250s, is real. To score 250 batting first is hard enough, and you learn to chase it down,” he says.Story continues below this ad
Coming off a comparatively sedate SA20 edition, the 24-year-old relays the contrast in T20 batting in India and back home.
“We just played SA20, and some of those wickets were really spicy. You think the wickets are going to be good and then it is nipping around or seaming. So, there (in South Africa) it is more like playing One-Day cricket in a T20 game. Here, the wickets are true. So you can commit to what you want to do.
“You don’t have to worry about the surface reacting differently. As a batter, that is what you want. So, hopefully, it continues through the whole IPL,” says Stubbs.
With the conditions skewed heavily in favour of the willow-wielders, one can surmise that teams that send more hits over the fence develop an advantage somewhere down the line in the push for the Playoffs. Save for the inaugural edition in 2008, every IPL final has hosted at least one of the top two six-hitting teams of the corresponding season. The top six-hitting side has also clinched the title eight times between 2009 and 2021.Story continues below this ad
The ‘sixes and flat pitches’ theme can be a humdrum reality for the players. But if the evolving trends are anything to go , the IPL scoring mutation is only about to get bigger and faster in season 18.