Boundary percentage flatters batters who cannot run

A high proportion of runs in fours and sixes often marks a player who is stuck rather than dominant.

There is a stat that gets quoted admiringly and should not be. Percentage of runs scored in boundaries. High number, aggressive player, good thing.

Sometimes. Other times it is the signature of a batter who cannot score any other way, and the two look identical on the sheet.

Think about how a middle order innings actually goes. A batter arrives with the field spread, facing a bowler landing it in the same spot, and his options are to find the gaps for ones and twos or to hit over the top. Rotating strike keeps the scoreboard moving without risk, disturbs the bowler's rhythm, and hands the strike to a partner who might be seeing it better. Boundaries do the same job in bigger chunks with far more risk attached, and against a well set field with a defensive line, the boundary option is available maybe twice an over.

So a player whose runs come overwhelmingly in fours has probably spent long stretches unable to manufacture anything else, and those stretches show up in his strike rate as dot balls. Two sixes in an over covers a great many dots. It also means the partner at the other end faced almost nothing, which is a cost the batter's own numbers never carry.

The version of this number I would trust is boundary percentage sitting next to dot ball percentage, always, in the same line. High boundaries and low dots is genuine dominance and it is rare. High boundaries and high dots is a batter having a duel with the bowler rather than building an innings, and depending on the match situation that is either brave or self indulgent.

Fielding captains understand this perfectly, which is why they are so happy to set a ring that concedes nothing on the ground against certain players. They are inviting the duel because they know the alternative, a batter who takes six singles an over and never gives a chance, is far harder to bowl at.

The best modern one day innings I can remember watching contained very few boundaries in its first thirty balls and nobody who was there thought it was slow.

Ones are boring. Ones also do not get caught at long on.