As WPL arrives, six-hitting expected to see an uptick

UP Warriorz' Kiran Navgire plays a shot during a ‘Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2024’ T20 cricket match between Mumbai Indians and UP Warriorz, at M Chinnaswamy Stadium, in Bengaluru. (PTI)

After the successful completion of three editions of the Women’s Premier League (WPL), the latest one, starting Friday, comes on the heels of India’s pathbreaking World Cup triumph last year. With such momentum behind it, focus has shifted to how the women’s game is likely to progress further. And this year’s WPL may well put on full display the latest evolution in the sport: six-hitting.

A winner of seven World Cups across formats, captaining Australia to victory in five of them, Meg Lanning believes this is one of the most notable differences as women’s cricket has evolved. She has been a mainstay of the WPL, guiding Delhi Capitals to three successive finals before moving to the UP Warriorz this year, and in highlighting the contributions of Indian middle-order enforcer Kiran Navgire – who tonked 16 sixes in last year’s WPL – for her team, she said that power hitting is a more crucial quality today than it was a few years ago.

“I think that’s been a really big development in the game,” Lanning told media on Monday. “I don’t know the stats but I assume the six hitting ability of each team has increased throughout each tournament and I think it will be the same again this year so hopefully it makes it a really exciting product to watch.”

The stats do back up that claim. Last year, 193 sixes were plundered from 22 games, shooting up from 159 in the inaugural edition in 2023. The same has been true of franchise leagues elsewhere. The 2025 edition of the Women’s Big Bash League in Australia saw 195 maximums in 42 matches, as compared to 279 in 59 games in 2023. A lower rate of balls-per-six (26.8 as compared to 44.9) was witnessed, that is a 6 every fifth over rather than every eighth over.

Unlike the modern iteration of men’s T20 cricket, the women’s game still holds plenty of value for classical batting attributes. But the strike rates of the batters, and the number of sixes hit in the franchise leagues, have noticeably increased, putting emphasis on aggression and overt strokeplay. It’s a trend that seeped into each team’s picks in the highly competitive mega auction this year – as several top international stars went under the hammer with just five teams to fill.

Among the batters there were some big surprises. The likes of England’s Heather Knight and Sri Lanka’s Chamari Athapaththu would not find takers. Even a formidable player like Australia’s wicketkeeper-batter-captain Alyssa Healy went unsold. Instead, teams leant more heavily on allrounders over specialists, and a premium was put on big hitters like Chinelle Henry, who secured a Rs 1.3 crore bid from Delhi Capitals. The Jamaican allrounder had taken the league by storm last year with robust finishing contributions, ending the tournament with a chart-topping strike rate of 196.38.

Henry joins another all-out aggressor, Shafali Verma, at Delhi. Together they alone accounted for 33 of the 193 sixes hit last year, laying bare the formation of the franchise’s batting strategy. But Marizanne Kapp, the South African allrounder who has been with the franchise from the first year, warns against leaning too heavily on them for the course of an entire tournament.

“It (six-hitting) is very important, more so in T20 cricket,” Kapp said. “But at the same time, you can’t only have a batting lineup full of the hitters. You definitely need people around them who can support them through an innings and build. That balance is more important than just going big constantly and I feel like we have it. Everyone needs to complement each other.”

With more eyes on women’s cricket than ever before, especially on these shores, the franchise’s big bet on big hitters will be an intriguing emerging pattern. Even more so considering its impact, or lack thereof, at the T20 World Cup in July, which will take place in contrasting conditions of the wet English summer.

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