The Pooran dimension: Space, range and repeated carnage

Nicholas Pooran's T20 batting is all about space, positioning, muscle memory, and a mean bat swing. This season, he's averaging five sixes a game while leading the charts in run aggregate. He's also one of only two batters among the top 15 scorers to have hit more sixes (31) than fours (25). The prospect of him tonking sixes - pleasing or distressing, depending on which side of the fence you're on - is built on years of perfecting the most high-risk craft in the game.

"I've talked to him [Pooran] about needing the right space," Julian Wood, a renowned power-hitting coach, tells Cricbuzz. "If you have too much space, you lose control. Too little, and you feel restricted. But once you get that spacing right, the bat just flows through the ball. His bat swing is so pure. The timing of his snaps with the ball is perfect. And his spacing is great," Wood explains.

Wood's stint as a batting consultant with Punjab Kings began in the 2022 season, soon after Pooran moved on from the franchise, but the two have often spoken about batting and their shared passion for power hitting. At 5'6", Pooran might appear physically compact for the kind of six-hitting menace he's become, but the power and precision, Wood reckons, come from rhythm and the timing of his movements.

"I surprise myself sometimes," Pooran said after his 34-ball 61 helped LSG beat GT at home on Saturday. "For me, it's about trying to get the ball as close to the middle of the bat as possible and trusting my bat swing."

Pooran was just eight when the first-ever T20I was played, and 12 when BCCI rolled out the carpet for the inaugural season of IPL in 2008. His foray into the game, and subsequent rise, have been in lockstep with the evolution of the format itself. Though he has been part of the IPL ecosystem since 2019, the depths of his capabilities have truly been uncovered only this season.

LSG turned their premium retention - at INR 21 Crore, into a shrewd piece of business by taking another big decision - of nominating him as the designated No.3. In a team that opens with two right-handers (Aiden Markram and Mitchell Marsh), his arrival at one-drop has been unconditional. This season, he has had three entry points in the PowerPlay, two right after it and one at the start of the second half of the innings, where he batted till the end and smashed his best score - 87* off 36 against KKR. Affording him time at the crease has yielded instant dividends along with roaring match-up wins.

On Saturday, he arrived at 65/1 in the seventh over, with LSG already on course in chase of GT's 180/6. At the 10th-over mark, Shubman Gill decided to take a risk - of chucking a left-arm spinner in Pooran's path. Only two other captains (Pat Cummins and Hardik Pandya) before him have dared to attempt that with humbling results as Pooran went 6, 6, 0, 6, 4, 1 against Abhishek Sharma (2) and Mitchell Santner (4).

Sai Kishore, however, came with better credentials than the former and more confidence than the latter. He'd already tried his variations that consumed big-hitters this season, including one of Pooran's ilk - Heinrich Klaasen. All of this though, was turned to dust when Pooran moved his front leg out of the way and smashed a short delivery for a six over mid-wicket to welcome the spinner. Sai Kishore shifted lines, lengths and sides but ended up conceding two more sixes in a 24-run over.

'Never bowl a left-arm spinner to Pooran' is a rule that needs to be etched in stone in the IPL. Gill went down that treacherous road with the optimism that having to hit to the longer square boundary (70m on the leg side, 63 on the off) could throw Pooran off his game. This, however, wasn't the first time this season that Pooran made mockery of skewed boundary lengths. Ajinkya Rahane laid out a similar trap at the Eden Gardens four days ago - again with the longer square fence at 70m - only for Pooran to rise above this dimensions gambit and flay the spinners again.

Finding the right middle-overs cure for Pooran has been near impossible this season. Axar Patel went to the other end of the spectrum, and still came away with a battering. As a left-arm spinner, he rightly stayed away from bowling himself when Pooran was in the middle, but pushed his luck by trying to sneak in an over from Tristan Stubbs - a part-time off-spinner who essentially turned the ball away from Pooran. The direction of spin was insignificant as Pooran took 28 off it. As many as 22 of Pooran's 31 sixes this season have come against spinners.

That hasn't meant that quicks have had their way with him. The numbers aren't as staggering but they're still heavily stacked against the ones with the ball in hand. Pooran has combined his flawless spin game with the knack for hitting pace with as much aplomb. He has also been able to see through change of pace on most occasions, keeping his shape to punish those deliveries too, as Mohammed Siraj learnt in the 13th over when his slower bouncer was deposited in the top-tier over deep square leg.

Playing as a finisher before has also sharpened his game against the tricks of the death. "There are not many players in T20 cricket who've batted from number one to number seven throughout their career. To start with, he was used as a finisher and so he trained to be one. He'd train for bowling at the death - wide yorkers, slower balls, things like that. And because he's batted everywhere, he's had great experience in different positions," Wood says.

Since the start of 2024, Pooran has hit 218 sixes in all T20s - 94 more than the next best on the list (Klaasen). This period includes a scintillating IPL 2024 season where he hit 35 sixes on his way to 499 runs in 14 matches at a strike rate of 178.21. As of Saturday night, he's already within 150 runs of that total this season, with at least eight games to play. If his six-hitting tempo continues, last season's tally could be eclipsed as early as Monday night against CSK.

After underwhelming stints at Punjab Kings and Sunrisers Hyderabad - where he often felt like a luxury left unpacked - LSG have cracked the code, both at the auction table and on the field, to line-up with the most devastating version of Pooran yet.