A recent survey found that a job in the armed services was the least desired career for some members of Gen Z, followed by working at the fast-food joints with golden arches or a colonel.

But they clearly didn’t offer the right answer as an option to tick: a bowler in the Big Bash League.

Seriously, who’d do it? There hasn’t been a more thankless occupation since henchmen were first rostered to line up and fight Bruce Lee.

Bowling in Twenty20 cricket, and fast bowling in particular, has always been a tough job since the sawn-off version of the game began over two decades years ago.

But the treatment the bowlers took in the early summers of the BBL looks gentle compared to the pummelling we now see.

Steve Smith launches one into the stands.Credit: Getty Images

There is an average of 13 sixes hit in every BBL fixture, which is a different planet from the six sixes per game in the competition’s first iteration in 2011-12.

With five games in the season remaining at the time of writing, the 2025-26 season is tracking to break the record for most sixes (588), set in last season’s BBL.

Finn Allen, the burly Kiwi who opens for the Scorchers with the equally powerful Mitch Marsh, has crunched 33 sixes this season and is only three behind Mitch Owen’s record set last summer. Allen is one of nine players to hit a BBL century this season. The previous season’s record was six.

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