Alright so last Tuesday I was chilling with my cricket stats app open, right? Totally random, but IPL 2020 popped into my head. Specifically, I got crazy curious about which teams actually smashed the most sixes that season. Everyone talks big players, but I wanted to see the numbers myself and figure out the ‘how’.
The Starting Point: Digging Up Raw Numbers
First thing? I grabbed my laptop, fired up that stats site I always use (you know the one, kinda clunky), and pulled up the IPL 2020 team totals. Scrolled straight to the ‘sixes’ column. Boom! Mumbai Indians topped the list – no huge shocker there, they were stacked. But wait, Royal Challengers Bangalore? Pretty high up too, way higher than I kinda expected. Punjab was floating near the top. This was the basic picture.
Hunting the Big Hitters
Okay, knowing the teams was step one. Step two? Finding out who inside those teams was actually launching those balls into orbit. So I drilled down into individual player stats for MI, RCB, Punjab.
- Mumbai? Obvious. Pollard – the guy is a six-hitting machine. Sky looked solid too. But honestly, it felt spread out – Hardik, Kishan, even Rohit chipped in decently. Pure headache for bowlers.
- RCB? This one screamed two names: AB de Villiers and Virat. Almost felt like half their sixes came just from ABD! Dube threw in a few, but yeah, heavily reliant on the superstars.
- Punjab? Rahul – tons of runs, tons of sixes! Pooran lit it up sometimes, but man, Gayle played less than I remembered. Rahul was carrying a huge load.
The Strategy Puzzle (Where Things Got Interesting)
Here’s where I scratched my head. Having big names is one thing, but how did that translate to more sixes? Was it just pure power? Felt like there was more.
Dug into some old match reports and highlights. For Mumbai? It hit me. Their secret sauce felt like flexibility. Pollard and Pandya coming in later… those guys just see ball, hit ball for six. Plus, having batters like Sky and Kishan who could find the ropes early? Set the stage perfectly. They had multiple guys who could shift gears crazy fast.
Punjab? Honestly, less a grand strategy, more just King Rahul doing King Rahul things. When he fired and cleared the ropes, Punjab’s count jumped. Simple as that.
RCB? Classic example of match-ups. Virat and ABD, especially ABD later on – teams would hold back their best death bowlers just for him. And ABD? He’d still smash them out. Watching those back, it felt like those two targeted specific bowlers they fancied, waited for their over, and BOOM. Ruthless exploitation.
Surprises & Dead Ends
Tried to check if ground sizes mattered much. Turns out? Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah – Sharjah was tiny, all teams hit more sixes there! Like, duh. But it affected everyone more or less equally. Didn’t really explain the differences between MI, RCB, Punjab and, say, Chennai who hit way less.
Also looked at run rates. Generally, faster teams hit more sixes, obviously. Mumbai consistently went big in the middle and death. Punjab sometimes slower at the top (Rahul anchoring), relied on late bursts… sometimes it worked (sixes), sometimes they fell short.
The Real “Aha!” Moment
Putting it all together? Teams that smashed the most sixes usually had two things:
- One or two genuine six beasts (Pollard, ABD, Rahul at his peak).
- A batting order that let those beasts bat where they could do max damage – whether holding back ABD for the death, or letting Pollard/Pandya loose in the slog. MI was king because they had multiple guys who could play that role, plus a super deep batting line-up that let everyone swing freely.
Took a few hours poking around old data and watching clips, but that was the real juice. Stats tell you the ‘who’, but you gotta dig into the games to find the ‘how’. Mumbai won it all for a reason – their whole batting setup was built to launch missiles consistently.
