Klaasen flexes both his range and restraint during 37-ball ton

Sometimes you wonder if the modern hitters find anything difficult at all. Minutes after scoring a 37-ball hundred - the join-third-quickest in the IPL - Heinrich Klaasen said the most pleasing aspect of the knock was not trying to hit every ball for a six. "I think that's where I went wrong this season," Klaasen said.

Firstly a comment on his season. In 13 innings, he has been dismissed for under 20 only once. It hasn't been that bad a season. This hundred makes it nearly 500 runs at a strike-rate of 172.69.

Now onto the ridiculous notion that he actually tried to not hit every ball. He still hit nine sixes. That's one every four balls. Not that many of his seven fours were along the ground. They were mostly six attempts that fell just short. You have the odd miss, and pretty much every second ball was an attempt to hit a six.

Klaasen was most pleased that he tried to hit a six only every second ball and not each ball. That he respected it when the bowlers got their hard lengths right. And yet, imagine hitting a boundary every second ball without overreaching. That is the level some of the modern power-hitters are operating at given the pitch is true.

In this innings, Klaasen found his perfect point of entry. Not only did he walk in just when the spinners were starting to bowl, but also at the fall of just one wicket, which suggests a good start already. He has previously started his innings sooner but that's because wickets had fallen too early. He has batted at No. 3 in one other innings, but in the 13th over.

In Delhi, Klaasen had his ideal match-ups and also time to go. Still it took him only two balls before he hit the first six: just a marginal error of length from the spinner, and out came his vertical pull.

When he said he didn't try to hit every ball for a six, Klaasen probably meant he was not anxious to score off balls that were not there to be hit. The standout feature of his hitting was avoiding over-hitting the ball. That he can score a hundred in 37 balls without looking to manufacture shots or without trying to over-hit tells you how vast his hitting range is.

"I didn't do what I wanted to do," Klaasen said of the rest of the season. "Got a lot of starts and never kicked on, and finally kicked on [in this innings] … Today I think I got my trajectory a little bit better. Didn't take on too many fielders, so I'm very pleased with that."

So not only was Klaasen not hitting sixes off lengths he should be respecting, he was also hitting them into areas where there were no fielders. That they have such skilled batters is why Sunrisers Hyderabad could think of 300 coming into the season. They might not have made the playoffs but they came close to scoring 300 on two occasions.

If Klaasen can keep finding this tempo and keep dovetailing with the openers as nicely as he did in Delhi, SRH will keep challenging that 300 mark in 2026.