How run-rates have run away with it

Not that I'm looking for sympathy, but you fly by the seat of your pants in the punditry business.

Not long ago in The Observer, I ventured that Kevin Pietersen would, by the end of his career, be acclaimed as the most prolific hitter of sixes in the history of Test cricket. He had, at that point, 27 in 12 and a half matches. It's still a reasonable shout. If he plays for another 12 years, at a minimum seven Tests a year, and continues to clout the ball freely - it would be unreasonable to assume he would do so at his early helter-skelter rate, so let's say he averages 1.5 sixes a Test - he will have added 126 maximums for a career tally of 153. And that, surely, would be enough to put Pietersen clear of the other obvious contenders still playing, and who have a considerable head start on him: Adam Gilchrist, with 93 from 85 Tests, and Andrew Flintoff, 74 from 62 Tests. So, get yourself down to the bookmakers and lump on.

Not so smart, however, was my assertion in the same piece that "Monty [Panesar] will not hit a six as long as he plays the game." Of course he did so in his very next Test. Well done Nostradamus. A much safer call was the rather obvious rider that, "he will take more wickets ... "

But in that one embarrassing swipe by Monty, I was reminded that these are strange times for tailenders, even a rabbit like Panesar. Who would have thought, for instance, that Jason Gillespie would have an individual Test score greater than anything Steve Waugh could manage? The boundaries have been pushed back so far, so to speak, they are out of sight.

There can no longer be any doubt this is a genuine golden age of batting. Partly this is down to ordinary bowling, springy bats, flat pitches and, on occasion, the boundary rope being brought in - but, more pertinently, there is a palpable hunger for quick and big scores in all forms of the game.

This, surely, is the legacy of Twenty20. What were once considered impossible run-rates - 10-per-over, say - are now targets. This filters down to the one-day game and into Test cricket.

Sky, for whom the thrash-bash form of the game might have been invented in their role as purveyors of sport-as-showbiz, have a six-hitting league based on Tests, ODIs and the 20-over slog. Halfway through the summer, Adam Gilchrist was leading with 25 in 2006, ahead of Sanath Jayasuriya and Ricky Ponting on 23, and Andrew Symonds and MS Dhoni on 22.

Batsmen are scoring at a rate any cavalier of the past would envy. That was vividly illustrated at Chelmsford when Essex put 502 on the hitherto swaggering Australians from 105 overs one mad Saturday last September. This was the fixture - at a different venue, Southend - immortalised by Bradman's '48 Invincibles, when the tourists scored 721 from 129 overs against Essex in a day.

And what a day it was for Alastair Cook last year, the day after he was named Young Cricketer of the Year. Pointedly, his 214 was sprinkled with 33 fours and a six; Bradman, scoring 187 in the 1948 match, hit 32 fours and a five.

Chelmsford was the Australians' heaviest-ever hammering in a single day and it did their confidence no good at all just five days before going to The Oval in a failed attempt to rescue the Ashes.

What is also interesting about the comparisons between 2005 and 1948 is where Bradman's team scored their runs: almost all along the ground. As far as I can work out - cue the statisticians - only Sam Loxton cleared the fence.

When last summer's Australians batted at Chelmsford, Matthew Hayden rediscovered his hitting form and banged seven sixes. Is this bad batting? Certainly it is riskier. But it's what spectators crave. They long ago tired of safetyfirst accumulation. Even Geoff Boycott is a convert. Once, batsmen played in the 'V' for 20 overs, eschewed strokes that regularly got them out, never ever reverseswept, and treated bowling with watchful reverence. This was the age before the one-day game.

Keith Miller bowled more than 10,000 balls in his Test career and was never hit for six. That's quite a statistic. I wonder how he would have fared today, with bat or ball? Almost certainly he would have adapted with ease and a flip of his locks. Batting, certainly, is more physically dynamic than it ever was, even though there have always been whirring bats and hitters who preferred the aerial route. Gilbert Jessop, for example, didn't play many Tests, and statistics suggest he didn't hit many sixes. But in his time, the first Golden Age, over the fence was a mere four; you had to put the ball out of the ground for a six. And `The Croucher' scared many a passer-by, apparently.

Style comes into it. Some big strikers hit sixes without any apparent effort, relying on superb timing. Alistair Brown is one of these. So was Clive Lloyd. Andrew Flintoff hits golf shots. Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Chris Cairns were more overtly violent. And now we have Pietersen and his so-called flamingo-clip to leg. And I don't think it's going out on a limb to wager his outrageous hitting will entertain us for a long time to come.