West Indies-England clash sends six-hitting records into the stands

The West Indies and England have traded blows in a thrilling T20I series which yielded the most sixes in a bilateral series.

The five-match series resulted in a 3-2 win for the home side, and a mammoth total of 96 sixes from both sides. The previous record was 94 sixes, which was set in 2019.

Thirty-one of the 96 sixes came in just one game, which narrowly fell short of the record of 32 sixes. Rovman Powell of the West Indies hit the most sixes for an individual batter, smashing 14 of them across just three games.

Five players, including Powell, smashed eight or more sixes in the series. Nicholas Pooran hit nine of them, while Jason Roy, Tom Banton and Moeen Ali each hit eight of their own. Ali hit seven sixes in one match, the most in one inning, earning himself the man of the match award in the fourth game. It propelled four batters throughout the series to record a strike rate in excess of 200 at the end of their innings.

The West Indies also hit the third-most number of sixes for a team in a bilateral T20I series, with a huge tally of 51 sixes (from 576 balls faced). That is only bettered by themselves, from when they hit 58 in a series against Australia and 53 against South Africa, both in 2021.

They have now registered a half-century of sixes in a T20I series three times, reaffirming their position as a dominant powerhouse in world cricket.

England's effort to score 45 sixes in this series became the sixth-highest tally in a T20I series and was also highly commendable. They had a marginally higher amount of balls faced to do so - 599.

The sheer batting firepower on display was reflected by the team's totals in all but the first match of the series. From the second match onward, first innings totals were 171, 224, 193 and 179. All five matches in the series were played at Kensington Oval in Barbados, where these totals exceeded the average first innings total for the venue.

But records were not limited to the batters in this series. Jason Holder of the West Indies took 15 wickets across five matches (including four wickets in four balls), which is now the most wickets taken by any bowler in a bilateral T20I series.

Such is the nature of international cricket, the West Indies have already touched down in Ahmadabad for a suite of white-ball fixtures against India.