T20 is a game of 120 balls, every ball could matter in the context of the game. Every field setting, every shot played, every ball bowled all have more importance in a T20 game than in any other format. And as it comes to this every batsman ideally should be utilising every ball he faces, an ideal batsman would have no dot balls and only boundaries but that as we know is realistically not possible. So this post is an understanding to find out which batsman has had used the most balls and what percentage of his balls have been sent to the boundary and what percentage has been non-boundary.

But first to understand how this will be done we need to find how many runs the batsman has scored per 100 balls in boundaries this will give us his Boundary Only Strike Rate (BOSR), by subtracting the BOSR from the actual SR we will be able to get the Non-Boundary Strike Rate (NBSR) this is the strike rate of the batsman for the non boundary runs. Also with the help of the 4s & 6s data we can find out the Boundary Only Scoring Shots (BOSS) by the batsman, but to find out the NonBoundary Scoring Shot (NBSS) we need to divide the NBSR by the value of one non-scoring shot which we have calculated to be 1.17, dividing NBSR by 1.17 will give us the NBSR.

Here is a sample calculation to find out the value for a batsman.

By using these numbers we can find out which batsman has been able to score more boundaries in his innings or who is a good to rotate strike. But the one drawback of a boundary only scoring shot is that a boundary ball does not hold the same value for every batsman for instance Wriddhiman Saha who scored 29 boundaries and single 6 the value for his BOSS is 4.07 but Chris Gayle who scored 17 boundaries and 21 6s his BOSS value is 5.11, so an ideal way to view these numbers would be also to use the BOSS with it’s value.

As it can been in the chart above, Krunal Pandya has been able to use the balls he faced in a better manner having sent most of his balls to the boundary while also rotating the strike at a decent enough rate and he has been able to hit the ball to the boundary at a rate better than most batsman also better than Chris Gayle.

Yuvraj Singh, McCullum, Dwayne Smith & Gayle were primarily sloggers not a surprise given these players are known more for their big hitting ability than their ability to rotate strike and all of them have a boundary value of more than 4.5 with Gayle having a boundary value of 5.11 which signifies the tendency of these batsmen to hit more maximums than usual. Pollard had a boundary value of 5.19 which is higher than Gayle, but gayle had more Boundary only scoring shots of 25% compared to 18% to that of Pollard which leads to 52 runs difference in their BOSR.

Krunal Pandya has been the most efficient user of the number of balls he faced he had a dot ball percentage of 22.84 which means he managed to score runs of the 77.16% of the balls he faced with 28% of them being BOSS with a boundary value of 4.74 and his NBSS being 49%, such utilization of the number of balls you face is an asset which Mumbai Indians looked to use more often than not by sending him up the order and he did not disappoint with his 86 against Daredevils being a prime example of his ability.

Virat Kohli the league top scorer was a batsman who looked to rotate the strike while also getting the maximums along the way, his boundary value of 4.63 higher than Steve Smith who just sits on his right for scoring more boundaries in his innings but Smith has a boundary value of 4.46

The batsmen can be divided into 4 main categories

Slogger: Generally batsmen who have a higher BOSS (>18%), but have a lower NBSS (<35%) Bad: Batsmen who have a BOSS of below 18% and a NBSS of below 50% Workers: Batsmen who have a BOSS between 15% and 25% while also having a NBSS of 45% which signifies they score from more than 60% of their deliveries they face. Great: Batsmen who have a BOSS of greater than 25% and NBSS of more than 45%

So the data shows us that

Sloggers: Gayle, Yuvraj, McCullum & Dwayne Smith

Bad: No one matched the criteria but the closest to it was Sanju Samson

Workers: Shikhar Dhawan. Ajinkya Rahane. Dhoni, Murli Vijay, Karun Nair, Rohit Sharma, Buttler, Uthappa, KL Rahul, Raina, Dinesh Karthik, Virat Kohli, Warner, Steve Smith & AB DeVilliers

Great: Krunal Pandya

Again the work of this analysis is to not show us who scored the most runs, we have the traditional stats to show that but to find out which batsman was able to use the limited resources of 120 balls his team had most efficiently during his stay at the crease.

With the T20 format being a condensed format every ball matters and every players should try to maximise the output of every ball he has an action in, but the batsman can’t send every ball for a boundary and this analysis helps us slightly understand which batsman is able to make most use of the balls he faces.