WPL 2023: Power game well & truly on display: A glimpse of future of women’s cricket?
Women's Premier League (WPL) 2023: Power game well & truly on display: A glimpse of future of women’s cricket? From 24 games played so far in WPL 2023, a total of 155 sixes were hit.
Over the years, the skill of using power in playing those big shots has been a real change in men’s cricket in all the three formats of the game and to an extent, it has also begun to touch base with women’s cricket.
The confidence to clear the ropes is one of the aspects of power-hitting but that’s not the only ingredient that transforms a player to a real power-hitter; the positioning before playing those big shots is also a valuable feature of smashing those huge sixes.
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Overall strike rate in women’s cricket increased by 14 percentage points in 2015-23 as compared to 2004-14
The availability of a simple data will make it comfortable to understand how teams have started paying more attention on increasing the strike rate and have tried to go beyond the boundary rope more often.
From the year 2004 to 2014, in all women’s T20Is featuring Australia, England, India, New Zealand, South Africa and West Indies, the strike rate of players was just around 96.17 in 259 matches. The numbers jumped tremendously in the next eight and half years. Since January 1, 2015, in 355 women’s T20Is featuring the above-mentioned teams, the strike rate jumps to around 110.34. That’s a significant jump of around 14 percentage points over the earlier period.
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Increased strike rate & sixes in WPL 2023 too
Coming to WPL 2023, in 24 games played so far till the eliminator between Mumbai Indians Women (MI-W) and UP Warriorz, a total of 155 sixes were nailed. Let’s take a look at the number of sixes by different teams.
WPL Franchise | Number of Sixes |
Mumbai Indians Women (MIW) | 27 |
Gujarat Giants (GG) | 24 |
Delhi Capitals Women (DCW) | 39 |
Royal Challengers Women (RC |