The extravagant and most popular T20I league in the world, Indian Premier League (IPL) has achieved another milestone among the many on Sunday. The league which is renowned for raining sixes and the same was seen in the match between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Punjab Kings on Sunday in the ongoing 15th edition of the IPL.
The match saw the overall count of sixes getting past 10,000 mark. Batting first, PBKS posted a total of 151 which was loaded with seven big sixes out of which Liam Livingstone belted four in his blistering knock of 60 off 33. In the 13th over Livingstone hit the record six to take the total tally of sixes to 10,005. Meanwhile, so far more than 420 sixes have been already pummelled in the current season itself.
The record of blowing the most sixers in the IPL is in the name of the legendary West Indies batsman Chris Gayle. The Windies superstar hit a record 357 sixes in 141 innings. He is followed by explosive South African batsman AB de Villiers, who has 239 sixes in 157 innings.
As far as the current season is concerned, so far Rajasthan Royals’ opener Jos Buttler has hit 18 sixes. As far as the record of most sixes in a season is concerned, here too Chris Gayle is at the top. He had hit a record 59 sixes in 14 innings in 2012.
Talking about the match, the young pace sensation Umran Malik produced a stunning 20th over as SRH bundled out PBKS to 151.
The 22-year-old uncapped pacer was on fire in the last over when he picked three wickets while the fourth came via run out. The over ended up being a rare wicket maiden.
Malik's sensational spell came after Liam Livingstone's counter-attacking 60-run knock. Punjab without their skipper and opener Mayank Agarwal (injured toe) had an anxious start and lost two wickets inside five overs including that of stand-in captain Shikhar Dhawan (8).
Punjab kept losing wickets and were soon reduced to 33/2 inside five overs when Livingstone came in to take charge of the proceedings. There were more to follow as Jonny Bairstow (12) and Jitesh Sharma (11) departed in successive overs but Livingstone and Shahrukh held on to turn it around in the middle overs.
