It is an indictment of how skewed the contest between bat and ball has become that for 2961 ODIs, no batsman broke the 200-run barrier and now three have done it in the last 467 matches. Rohit Sharma was the latest entrant to the club, after Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, and he hit 16 sixes – a world record – during a ransacking of Australia in the deciding match of a series that bowlers on both sides will be glad to leave behind. Incredibly, Australia lost because they were out of wickets and not time.
India hit 19 sixes as they racked up 383; Australia replied with 326, the ninth time in 11 innings that a team passed 300 this series. And though they lost by a sizeable margin in the end, they did not lose the six-hitting contest. Australia’s 19 blows over the Chinnaswamy Stadium’s tiny boundaries helped smash the record for the most sixes in a one-day international. India and New Zealand had hit 31 in Christchurch in 2009; India and Australia hit a numbing 38 today. Vinay Kumar’s 1 for 102 in nine overs were the worst figures by an Indian in an ODI; two Australians were close to owning the record for the quickest 50 by an Australian, and James Faulkner’s 57-ball 100 was his country’s fastest century. It was hard to make sense of it all.