Here’s a boring bit of cricket terminology: six.

Six used to have its own cachet, standing for a risk taken, a shot well and sometimes audaciously hit, a frisson in flight, some doubt about whether it would clear the fielders or the boundary, exultation when it did. Sixes were rare enough for each to be a landmark in a game.

Jake Fraser-McGurk has been devastating with the bat for the Delhi Capitals in the Indian Premier League.Credit: AP

But six has become the new two. And two is just about the most ho-hum score in cricket. It’s not a smartly taken single. It’s not three because threes don’t exist in Twenty20 cricket. And it’s not four or more. It doesn’t rotate the strike. Even when two is on, it’s usually baulked anyway.

Two is a mechanical, quotidian thing, a device to advance the score. Which is what six has become. Sixes happen along now at the rate twos once did. There were 42 in one match in the Indian Premier League the other day. They were like planes at Heathrow, flying over every couple of minutes.

They’ve been about 850 sixes in the IPL already this season, with a third of the tournament still to play out. That’s roughly 20 a match. Sunrisers Hyderabad are going at 12 a match by themselves. Jake Fraser-McGurk has hit 20 or them, or is it 50,........

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