The case of the disappearing ball: how six-hitting has gone into overdrive Premium

Watching a batter clear the fence used to be one of cricket’s novel experiences. In this era, however, sixes are coming at an astonishing rate. The IPL has played a prominent part in expediting the game’s transformation, but what makes the modern batter such an inevitable smiter of sixes?

For those of an older vintage who fell in love with cricket and its time-honoured traditions long before T20 became an all-pervasive part of the game, a six was a rare spectacle. An occasional occurrence that retained a tinge of novelty each time.

For the ball to sail into the stands, a batter had to summon a fair degree of physical strength and bring the blade’s thicker middle into play. Even as the quality of bats improved and the 50-over game grew in popularity in the 1990s and early 2000s, six-hitting came naturally to just a handful.

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The abandoning of inhibition

And then T20 cricket came along, altering the game in many ways on and off the field. Since the advent of the shortest format in England in 2003 and its subsequent blossoming around the globe, the biggest cricketing shift has been the abandoning of inhibition by batters. 

They have capitalised on the format’s inherent leaning towards them and augmented their six-hitting skills to an extent that couldn’t have been envisaged a couple of decades ago. So much so that the emphasis on pushing the game forward has filtered through to the ostensibly sacrosanct five-day version as well.

Here are some numbers to chew over. From 1877 to 1999, the first 123 years of Test cricket, an estimate of the total sixes hit was 4,585 across 1,480 matches. In the next 25 years, there have been 8,293 maximums. In ODI cricket, the first 29 years (1971 to 1999) saw 4,974 sixes over 1,531 matches. Since January 2000, 22,827 sixes have been smashed across 3,332 matches.