Mumbai: At no stage during Sunrisers Hyderabad’s run chase of 244 against Mumbai Indians on Wednesday night did they fall behind. No one blinked when they emerged as winners with eight balls to spare. A little over half way through IPL 2026, 200-plus totals have already been chased down a record 10 times. This is the season where what was once considered unfathomable has become the norm.
With new chasing records being upstaged every night – targets of 265, 244, 229 runs have been achieved over the last five days – seasoned cricket watchers, some players and coaches themselves have been wracking their brains over how to address the bat-ball imbalance. SRH bowling coach Muttiah Muralitharan was asked if longer boundaries could be the answer after their win against the Mumbai Indians.
“I don’t think pushing the boundary (back), when the bowler is flying over the ropes everywhere (is the answer),” Murali said.
“(Boundary) lines are not the thing; it’s the wickets. But then the spectators will say it’s becoming boring. 20-20 followers like entertainment. They want to see fours and sixes. That’s why the tournament is built like that. It’s entertainment. This is not looking at developing cricket. It is a big business at the moment.”
It was the most chilling admission from the game’s highest Test wicket-holder. You could also view Muralitharan’s views as a pragmatic take on the direction the game was taking.
The Sri Lankan is not just another cricketer from yesteryear talking. He played in 40 IPL matches and has constantly served in a coaching capacity. The Wankhede, Eden Gardens, and Chinnaswamy have been high scoring, short-boundary stadiums from the beginning. The spin legend argues that the batting aggression, increased tempo, and more fours and sixes in play are a direct consequence of the Impact Player rule.
Adding an extra batter to the lineup has freed batting strategies from the conventional wicket conservation mindset. When captains and coaches raised the matter of bowlers and all-rounders’ left at a significant disadvantage before the season, IPL authorities gave their verdict – the rule was here to say, at least till 2027; that’s the remainder of the commercial cycle. Muralitharan merely relayed those facts in an unvarnished manner.
IPL’s status as the most commercially attractive sports and entertainment property in India has remained unchallenged. That’s because it has been able to bring newer audiences to the game including more female fans. As per SYNCMEDIA’s panel which recently tracked cross-media exposure and downstream behaviour across 88 million adults (18+) in India’s top six metros, OTT audience lift among 18-24 year-olds during IPL was 68% – the highest of any age group by a wide margin.
This is a new young spending class that would know very little about Muralitharan’s Test heroics. They can appreciate Virat Kohli’s brilliance only because he has strived to reinvent his T20 game. They are captivated by the hitting arc of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Abhishek Sharma.
One might find watching too many boundaries boring. Some coaches have complained of the lopsided nature of bat-ball contests. That being so, IPL squads are evenly matched and barring a team or two having a nightmare of a season, most sides have equal resources to take contests deep. Until there is a measurable indicator of spectators or viewers being drawn away by too many boundaries, there won’t be any course correction.
“Over a period, bowlers will try to adapt,” said Muralitharan. “It will take some time. Sunrisers started this (fast paced) game, now everyone is adapting. So now the bowlers will go back on how we can contain and come with something else. This is the way modern cricketers are going…people adjust to the conditions.”
This IPL, Bumrah looks competently spent. When he was in peak bowling form during the T20 World Cup, his 6-run over, India’s 18th while defending 45 runs off 18 balls at the same Wankhede stadium against England in the semi-final was Hall of Fame material.
When asked if he or Shane Warne would have found success in this era, Muralitharan said, “We would have turned (the ball), but we would not have made a big dent. We would have turned (the ball), we could have gotten like one or two wickets. Maybe they would have scored 40 runs easily because the wickets are so good and you need about three-four bowlers like that to contain (the total) to less than 200.”
The fear is that with four years of watching T20 cricket in the Impact Player era, cricket fans may have become accustomed to Powerplays at breakneck speeds. Will they be able to appreciate the changed canvas when bowlers occasionally hold sway as they do in T20Is? And where would that leave viewers when it comes to adjusting back to the ODI and Test match tempo?
If the unhindered encouragement of run fests is coming at the cost of other cricket, which, for now, is equally spread across the sporting calendar is a matter for the authorities to ponder.