How India’s T20 batting in domestic cricket went on a six-hitting spree in 2024

Amidst this uncertainty, 2024 was also the year when India embraced T20 batting to its fullest.

While the senior team was wrapping up a series in South Africa after the World Cup triumph, India’s T20 season had already started with the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (SMAT). The major takeaway from the 133-match tournament was most batsmen discovering new methods and ability to hit big shots.

DNA dynamics

The seeds of the tectonic shift were sown with the introduction of the Impact Sub Rule in SMAT in 2022. The BCCI’s quest to boost the IPL’s entertainment factor may have been a reason. Since then, scoring rates have swelled by an astonishing stretch with the entire system buying into the philosophy. Muscle memory has begun to dictate instincts, so much so that the scrapping of the Impact Sub rule fir the 2024 SMAT didn’t slow-down the six-hitting surge.

A cursory progression is telling:

SMAT (Overall league batting SR) – 2022: 116.87 in 131 matches; 2023: 127.82 in 131; 2024: 135.54 in 133 (the highest-ever)

IPL (Overall league bat SR) – 2022: 133.94 in 74 mts; 2023: 141.71 in 74; 2024: 150.58 in 72 (highest-ever).

“The impact player rule has completely changed the mindset. Even though we don’t have that rule in SMAT(now), the inclination of all the players is to go and excel from ball one. When you have that kind of belief, it gives you that boost that you can take on every delivery,” Mumbai’s title-winning skipper Shreyas Iyer told The Indian Express in an Idea Exchange interaction.

Genesis

Having witnessed the rapid spurt in big hitting in the IPL, Jaydev Unadkat took a few insights home, from Sunrisers Hyderabad to Rajkot, to prepare for the metamorphosis that has blanketed the domestic structure.

Though Punjab set the template last season, smashing a record 114 sixes in 10 games to win their first SMAT title, they were outpaced in their own game this year. As many as 21 of the competing 38 teams ranked over Punjab, who only hit 47 sixes in seven matches this time.

A Ranji Trophy force over the last five years, Saurashtra have reinvented their T20 game significantly to emerge as one of the top five batting sides over the last few editions.

Unadkat underlines a significant cultural shift in coaching, leadership, and the new-age batter. “First-class cricket used to be the primary goal for a domestic start but that is changing. Almost every team has two or three batters and probably one or two bowlers as well who are T20 specialists. And they practise power-hitting throughout the year.

“Even if they aren’t selected for the Ranji Trophy, they might be good enough to get picked in the IPL with the scouts around. Someone playing a blinder, scoring 50 off 18 balls, gets selected by an IPL team. That’s why people now believe that they can make a career by only pursuing white-ball cricket. Those who do that work on power-hitting throughout the year,” Unadkat explains.

Domestic captains and coaches are also doubling up as scouting arms for new ‘white-ballers’. Unadkat unearthed 24-year-old Ruchit Ahir from the Saurashtra Premier League in 2023. Having spent nearly a year working in the shadows, Ahir was among the 157 SMAT debutants this season.

As Ahir churned out rapid fifties in his second and third appearances against Baroda and Tamil Nadu respectively, Saurashtra amassed two of their highest T20 totals, 266 and 233.

Record blitz

Thirty-seven 200-plus totals were made in the tournament. Baroda shattered the world record with a brutal 349/5 assault on Sikkim with 37 sixes in their final group game to boost the net run rate and qualify for the knockouts. On the same day, Mumbai razed down a 230-run target in the highest successful SMAT chase, pipping Andhra and Kerala to finish atop their group.

With a power-packed batting line-up and a middling bowling attack, chasing would form the core of Mumbai’s knockout plans. Iyer’s men gunned down another 220-plus total in the quarters before trumping Baroda and Madhya Pradesh in chases to win their second title in three editions.

Mumbai almost took bowling out of the strategy. Among the eight quarterfinalists, they held the worst bowling economy, leaking 9 runs per over. However, The bats of Ajinkya Rahane, Suryakumar Yadav, Iyer, Shivam Dube and rookie Suryansh Shedge ensured that they had enough firepower, averaging 10.42 runs per over, the best among the last eight.

“You have got great depth in the batting line-up. Players can come in and go bonkers right from ball one. That has boosted a lot of batsmen’s confidence. And the change is inevitable. You can’t control the emotions of batsmen. If you feel personally as a batsman that you can take on any bowler, you just go for it,” Iyer said.

The bug even caught veteran Rahane. He was the unlikely topper of the SMAT batting charts, finishing with 469 runs, a strike rate of 164.56 and 19 sixes. As he himself would put it, this avatar was a product of “extension of my defence”, a broadening of senses.

Unadkat agrees. “There was a fear of getting out in the previous generation. ‘What if we try to hit two sixes in a row and get out and get scolded by the coach?’ That has vanished in the younger lot now. I saw that being a part of SRH last season. If the wicket is good, if the ball is coming nicely onto the bat, you can hit two or three sixes in a row. That’s what I told my side and our coach was on the same page.

“We noticed Ruchit and several other players in the regional league. He played a blinder of a knock in SPL last year and that’s when I noticed him for the first time. He didn’t play any red-ball cricket. He has only been playing white-ball for the U23 team and came straight into the T20 side, based on that one knock,” says the left-arm bowler.

Ahir finished with 14 sixes in five innings, the highest for Saurashtra in this SMAT edition.

Slippery slope

Similar selections have been noticed across many sides, says Unadkat, who also cautions against a slightly precarious pathway up ahead. The Cheteshwar Pujaras aren’t flooding the circuit as quickly as the Ruchit Ahirs.

“A lot of those players don’t even try to change their game according to the red-ball cricket demands. That’s a big shift in domestic cricket in general. Whether it’s going to harm red-ball cricket or not, I think we are going to wait and watch over the years,” Unadkat observes

New heroes

While it’s a potentially distending concern, India would do well to reflect on the T20I performances as they approach their world title defence. With the 2026 World Cup likely to see a majority of matches on India’s fast-scoring grounds, they would do well to maintain the tempo they have built in the format.

India’s T20I year culminated with an overall runs per over of 9.55, building on from 9.23 in 2023 and 9.20 in 2022. Post the T20 World Cup win in June, India’s new-age heroes have taken up the mantle. In only five months, Indians have scored six centuries in T20Is and their highest total – a colossal 297 against Bangladesh in Hyderabad.

The brilliance of Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma and Sanju Samson in recent months will be hard to ignore even when a few all-format regulars return after Test and ODI assignments.

Major Indian T20 records broken this year

297: India’s highest T20I score, v Bangladesh in October 2024, is also the highest by a Test-playing nation

1,855: Sixes in SMAT 2024-25, the most in a recognised T20 league.

14: Most hundreds in a SMAT season

3: Sanju Samson became the first T20I batter to record three centuries in a year.

3: Tilak Varma became the first T20 batter to hit hundreds in three consecutive matches.

151: Tilak Varma became the first Indian man to hit a T20 150-plus score.

87: Abhishek Sharma recorded the most T20 sixes by an Indian in a calendar year.

28: Abhishek Sharma and Gujarat’s Urvil Patel recorded the joint-fastest T20 hundreds by Indians, off 28 balls, the second-quickest worldwide.

349/5: Baroda’s world record T20 score against Sikkim, also contained a record 37 sixes.