The Six Hitters: Who Clears the Rope Most Often in Our Data
Kohli tops the IPL six count. Suryakumar Yadav tops the T20 international one. But counting sixes rewards whoever batted longest, so we also worked out the rate, and on that measure one name beats everybody by a distance most people will not expect.
Sixes are the easiest thing in cricket to remember and the hardest to count. Here is the count, from our own ball-by-ball data, with the spans stated so nobody mistakes these for lifetime records.
T20 internationals, 2017 to 2026
- Suryakumar Yadav, 138 (2,343 runs, strike rate 170.5, 71 innings)
- Rovman Powell, 135
- Nicholas Pooran, 125
- Jos Buttler, 108
- Rohit Sharma, 100
- Brandon King, 87 and Tim Seifert, 87
- Mitchell Marsh, 84
- Evin Lewis, 83
- Hardik Pandya, 82
Four of the top ten are West Indians. That is not a coincidence and it is not nostalgia: it is the clearest signal in this list.
The IPL, 2013 to 2026
- Virat Kohli, 267
- Sanju Samson, 243
- Rohit Sharma, 241
- KL Rahul, 239
- Chris Gayle, 228
- Andre Russell, 220
- Jos Buttler, 211
- AB de Villiers, 209
- MS Dhoni, 200
- David Warner, 192
Kohli at the top of a six hitting list is the sort of fact that sounds wrong and is not. He has batted in 207 innings in our IPL data, more than anyone else on this list, and volume wins counting contests.
Now the rate, which is the more interesting question
Balls faced per six, in our IPL data:
- Andre Russell: a six every 6.8 balls.
- Chris Gayle: every 9.7 balls.
- Nicholas Pooran: every 8.3 balls.
- Virat Kohli: every 20.8 balls.
Russell has faced 1,499 balls in our IPL records and hit 220 sixes from them. One in every seven deliveries he faces leaves the ground. Nobody else with a meaningful sample is close.
Gayle's number is remarkable in a different way: 228 sixes in only 99 innings, an average of 2.3 per innings, from a batter whose IPL career began five years before our ball-by-ball data does. Whatever the true figure is, it is larger than ours.
In T20 internationals, the best rates in our data belong to Evin Lewis, a six every 8.7 balls, and Suryakumar Yadav, every 10.0.
The Big Bash, 2013 to 2026
- Chris Lynn, 210
- Ben McDermott, 146
- Glenn Maxwell, 143
- Marcus Stoinis, 118
- Ashton Turner, 111
Lynn's 210 in 121 innings is the highest total we hold in any league outside the IPL, in a competition our phase data shows to be one of the harder ones to score in.
The honest bit, which changes some of these numbers
Every figure here is "in our data", and the spans differ by competition: IPL from 2013, T20 internationals from 2017, Big Bash from 2013. Careers that started earlier are cut off at those dates.
Chris Gayle is the clearest casualty. So, in the international list, is Rohit Sharma, who has been playing T20 internationals since well before 2017. Where a real career total exists elsewhere, it will be higher than ours. We publish the window we can verify, and we tell you where it starts.
What none of that changes is the rate. A six every 6.8 balls is a six every 6.8 balls whichever window you measure it in, and by that measure Andre Russell is the most destructive batter in our entire T20 database.
All figures computed by CricNerd from our own ball-by-ball T20 database, with coverage windows as stated.