All Runs, No Wickets: IPL and Flat-Track Woes
Whenever a team scores 230+, it is a question of just how many runs they would win the match by. Things changed in 2024 edition of IPL when Punjab Kings (PBKS) faced the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Kolkata posted a mammoth total of 261/6 – only two runs short of the overall record of 263/5 set by Royal Challengers Bangalore back in 2013. And then came the opening pair of Johnny Bairstow with a dazzling 108* out of 48 and the local Prabhsimran Singh with 54 out of 20 balls. With support from Shashank Singh (68 off 28 balls) and Rilee Rossouw (26 off 16 balls), Punjab Kings managed to beat KKR with eight balls remaining. It wasn’t a close match. It was not a thrilling contest. From start to finish, Punjab managed to keep the run rate above thirteen with over 90 runs in the first six overs. Even with two teams with a combined total of 500+ runs, it looked like a cakewalk and what happened ever since got the pundits talking.
In the entire history of IPL, a score of 180 was respectable. Teams would wish they scored more than nine an over. 200 was considered a sure-shot match winner and just like the first match of the first IPL, a score of 220 was unplayable! Things changed after this spectacle at the PBKS vs KKR face-off.
After the high drama and high tension, the modern T20 cricket match started to shift, and, beyond the looks of it, it was never organic but engineered. Of course, fans loved the high-scoring but from broadcasters to franchises saw it as an opportunity to bolster their entire game. Curators now had the job to make the pitches as flat as possible. The flatter and more even the surface is, the greater the margin of error for the batters. Mistimed shots would go all the way to the boundaries and even six and wouldn’t resemble mistimed shots on ordinary cricket grounds. A batter’s movement and form became secondary. Good and full-length deliveries were set up for failure. Consequently, bowlers got the short end of the stick. Yorkers needed to be precise and slightly short balls could lead to huge hits.
The first one to get the memo was Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH). With brutal batting displays from Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head and Henrik Klaasen, everyone aided their team to not only surpass the record set by RCB twelve years prior but to do it twice with scores of 286 and 277. The Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium or the home ground of SRH was already a batting pitch. Scores from 165 to 180 were common and it was also the reason why historically, SRH and even Deccan Chargers (precursor to the SRH) had lethal batting squads.
While the average is still around the same figure, the numbers can be slightly misleading because they consider all the low-scoring T20 matches before these matches in 2025. Besides, the surface was still balanced back in the day. This was something that could give the spinners a bit of turn in the middle overs. Spinning had been Hyderabad’s fortress from Pragyan Ojha in the initial days to that of Rashid Khan until 2021. Now, they only have Washington Sundar. This is because the role of spinning in flat pitches has changed. Spinners are not considered a strike force in the modern T20 game but a variation to limit the flow of runs on such flat tracks. This has an impact on Indian cricket and the overall game.
A national team with a history of spinners like Ravichandran Ashwin, Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble, Amit Mishra and so on, the role of spinners are limited. Their deliveries are more easily read and picked for boundaries. Subsequently, they have also downplayed the prestigious accolade of the Purple Cap, which is awarded to the highest wicket-taker in the tournament. Bowlers frequently concede 40 to 50 runs despite taking the key wickets and turning matches in their favour. With that sort of economy in a T20 match, the wickets and, subsequently, the Purple Cap look more like a chance rather than a bowler’s actual talent.
Even the batting strategy changed. From having a squad full of power-hitters as assurance, these power-hitters are now enabled by the pitch conditions to go full throttle. The kind of merciless batting that was limited for death overs or powerplays now became the default for all overs. Captain's tactical changes become minimal.
The Royal Challengers Bangalore too, zeroed in with this strategy to assist the teams in having multiple 230+ scores. Even in their recent match against Chennai Super Kings, they posted a mammoth score of 253. Low-scoring pitches like Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium or Lucknow’s Ekana International Stadium saw a moderate increase in the average runs scored, despite the lack of “perfect batting-heavy curation”.
While entertainment is a crucial factor in the IPL, the spirit of the game lies in its competition rather than seeing bowlers as bowling machines. While teams like RCB and SRH have exposed this trend to rely on the brilliance of their batsmen, a stark contrast can be seen in Gujarat’s Narendra Modi Stadium. The home ground of the Gujarat Titans is a sustainable example where the pitch is a mix of red and black soil, the combination of which is altered in different situations to favour the home team. The red-soil is batter-friendly, leading to better bounce while the black soil assists in better grip of the ball, causing a variance in bounce.
The problem, hence, doesn’t lie in high totals fuelled by explosive batting. The problem lies in having an imbalance of the pitch, which is extreme for the bowlers. This is because when flat tracks become the norm, the pitch ceases to challenge the batsmen. Hence, it essentially becomes a competition of “who hits the ball hardest” rather than a competition where the bowler and batsmen are constantly trying to outdo each other.
[Authored by Shreyan Laha]
(Photo Credits : IPL official Website, Match 08 - TATA IPL 2026: DC vs MI 04 April, 2026)