Nicholas Pooran’s im­pec­ca­ble bat­ting makes him stand out among the pow­er-hit­ters in crick­et’s Twen­ty20 for­mat — with the num­bers to prove it.

The West In­dies left-han­der con­tin­ues to tor­ment bowlers in the lu­cra­tive In­di­an Pre­mier League. Pooran leads the “Or­ange Cap” bat­ting charts with 288 runs in five IPL games of this edi­tion for Luc­know Su­per Gi­ants at a stag­ger­ing strike rate (runs per 100 balls) of 225, hit­ting 24 six­es and 25 fours.

Here’s a by-the-num­bers look at Pooran’s as­cen­dan­cy to the top:

211

Wick­et­keep­er-bat­ter Pooran has hit 211 six­es since 2024. That’s 87 more than the sec­ond-best Hein­rich Klaasen of South Africa. Pooran broke his coun­try­man Chris Gayle’s record of most six­es in a cal­en­dar year in 2024 by smash­ing 139, com­pared to Gayle’s 135 six­es in 2015.

“I prac­tice a lot. Every­thing you see in the game is be­cause I prac­tice it,” Pooran said af­ter he blazed an un­beat­en 87 off just 36 balls against Kolkata Knight Rid­ers at Eden Gar­dens on Tues­day. “You un­der­stand what’s com­ing -- full and wide balls, slow­er short ones. Spin­ners bowl­ing straight or wide. And you work on it.”

738

Not many bat­ters on the T20 cir­cuit could main­tain both a healthy strike rate and av­er­age, but Pooran has man­aged it in style.

Since the be­gin­ning of 2024 he has scored 738 more runs than any­one else in the short­est for­mat of the game and is av­er­ag­ing 42.31 with an amaz­ing strike rate of 162.49. In his last 10 in­nings the av­er­age has risen to 57.7 and the strike rate to 199.

184

Equal­ly good against pace and spin, Pooran’s clas­si­cal left-hand­ed stance has seen him scor­ing at a strike rate of over 184 against spin over the last two sea­sons in the IPL. His bril­liant hand-eye co­or­di­na­tion has seen him smack­ing the left-arm pac­ers at a 173.5 strike rate while scor­ing at a strike rate of 163.5 against the right-arm fast bowlers.

“I’ve nev­er worked on my bat speed, I’m just blessed with in­cred­i­ble tal­ent,” Pooran said.

3

Luc­know gave Pooran the No. 3 spot to un­leash his phe­nom­e­nal bat­ting against both pace and spin.

Team cap­tain Rishabh Pant gave up the spot, which he called “a po­si­tion of free­dom” for Pooran, who has tak­en full ad­van­tage of the pro­mo­tion.

(AP)