How Chris Gayle’s record-breaking seasons in 2024 pale in comparison to Nicholas Pooran’s 165 sixes Even by the marauding standards of Caribbean bats, none have been as prolific as Nicholas Pooran this CPL: 504 runs in 11 innings, averaging 56 with a 169.69 strike rate.
Last Tuesday, Nicholas Pooran almost celebrated his 29th birthday by scoring his second hundred consecutive points in three days.
This year, the maverick of the Trinbago Knight Riders has been unstoppable in the Twenty20 format. With an oncoming crisis in the Caribbean Premier League eliminator against the Barbados Royals, Pooran was the man to watch.
Something ridiculous was required to stop him in his tracks. Pooran and the Knight Riders could never have imagined that the light towers at Providence Stadium would spell their demise. A defective tower caused an hour and a half of stoppage, ending the Knights’ innings at 19.1 overs with Pooran stranded on 91. David Miller’s fiery pursuit, coupled with a lowered goal of 60 in five overs, eliminated Pooran and his team from the competition.
Pooran’s season this CPL was the most productive yet, even by the rampaging standards of the Caribbean bats; he amassed 504 runs in 11 innings, averaging 56 with a 169.69 strike rate. After catastrophic bowling attacks in eight different nations countries and an equal number of competitions in both international and franchise colours so far this year, so Pooran’s most recent act of mayhem would not come as a total surprise.
Annus Mirabillis
However, Pooran’s 67 innings in 2024 will go down in history since no batsman has ever amassed a higher run total in a T20 calendar year. This year, the Trinidadian has destroyed almost every significant milestone in T20 batting.
Chris Gayle, a T20 legend, was regarded as unbeatable on the circuit after hitting 135 sixes in 2015. However, on September 1, Pooran ascended the pinnacle and went on to become the first man to smash 150 sixes in a year, even though he had taken up middle-order and No. 3 slots for his respective teams. In addition, he easily overtook Pakistan’s Muhammad Rizwan, who had scored 2036 runs in 2021, to become the record holder for most runs scored in a calendar year. Both of them are still the only batters who have scored more than 2000 runs in a single year.
But unlike the usually circumspect Rizwan, Pooran consistently used his big hitting to open up fresh T20 batting possibilities. Boundaries accounted for more than 71% (1606) of Pooran’s 2251 runs this season. There are presently 165 sixes in this aggregate, which is around 1000 runs.
While the increased number of innings helps, this is also a year where Pooran has been twice the bat he has been throughout the prior decade between 2013 and 2023. Prior to 2024, his average hovered around 25 in his 297 innings played. This year, Pooran has strengthened the mark of consistency to around 45 runs each inning. The astounding outcomes, when combined with his vicious scoring rates, have accounted for more over 27% of his total T20 career runs in just ten months!
It’s a confusing increase, especially in the sixes area. An all-around white-ball bludgeoner, Pooran shot up to the top of the all-time six-hitting records in just nine months, surpassing current white-ball sensations Glenn Maxwell, Miller, Rohit Sharma, and Jos Buttler. Pooran started out ranked sixteenth. The only group of people who face him are Gayle, Kieron Pollard, and Andre Russell, a well-known Caribbean three. Among players with at least 3000 T20 runs, only Russell (7.28) and Gayle (9.51) surpass his top rate of six-hitting every 9.62 deliveries.
This season, Pooran has also played a variety of positions for both his teams and the West Indies, filling in as a middle order finisher and batting in the top order. It’s interesting to note that he has performed best at No. 3, nearly redefining the position’s function while amassing 1191 runs at a strike rate of 160.91 and an average of 40 or higher. He is only the second No. 3 in T20 history to record over 1000 runs in a year, following South Africa’s Rilee Rossouw.
He’s not finished yet. By December, the West Indies will play 11 more Twenty20 Internationals, thus the 29-year-old has till the end of 2024 to envision more incredible achievements.
