Longest Sixes in Cricket: Biggest Hits Across All Formats

A cricket ball hit at the right angle, off the middle of a modern bat, can travel further than a car length past the boundary rope, twice over. That’s the scale we’re talking about when broadcasters flash “112m” on screen after a huge six. Power hitting has changed shape since the T20 era began, and a specific group of batters built their reputations on exactly this skill.

How six distance is measured

There’s no single standardized system for this across cricket. Broadcasters and leagues rely on ball-tracking and graphics overlays, and both the technology and the methodology differ between competitions and decades. Treat any specific distance as an estimate rather than a certified figure. Even so, clearing 100 metres consistently puts a batter in a small group.

The great distance hitters

Shahid Afridi, Pakistan

Afridi built his reputation in the 1990s and 2000s by clearing grounds few other batters of his era could reach. His sixes came from a bottom-hand-dominant swing that generated bat speed most contemporaries couldn’t match, and he did it often enough that it became his defining trait as a player.

Liam Livingstone, England

Livingstone has been tracked past 110 metres more than once in T20 internationals and franchise cricket. What separates him from a pure slogger is that he can generate that power in almost any direction, which makes setting a field against him difficult.

Glenn Maxwell, Australia

Maxwell pairs unusual technique with real power. His switch-hits and reverse-sweeps produce surprising distance, and in a conventional stance he clears long-on without much visible effort. Between the IPL and Australian domestic T20, he’s been doing this for over a decade.

Kieron Pollard, West Indies

Pollard’s build gave him raw power that translated directly into distance. Across the IPL, the CPL, and international cricket, he produced huge sixes on a fairly regular basis for most of his career.

David Miller, South Africa

Miller, known as “Killer Miller” for his finishing ability, has had sixes in the IPL and SA20 tracked well past 100 metres on multiple occasions. He’s built a career on being the batter South Africa turns to in the last few overs.

Biggest sixes by format context

Format	Context	Notable For
T20 Internationals	Most frequent big-hitting environment	Livingstone, Maxwell, Pollard standouts
IPL	Concentration of elite T20 hitters globally	Miller, Maxwell, Pollard, Russell
ODIs	Big hits less frequent; powerplay and death overs produce the longest	Afridi, de Villiers era standouts
Test cricket	Sixes rarer; lower-order batters sometimes produce surprise distance hits	Flintoff, Lee, Stokes in recent history

What makes a six travel far

• Bat speed and timing. Hitting the sweet spot at maximum bat speed matters more than anything else on this list.
• Launch angle. Too flat or too steep both cost distance; the sweet spot sits around 25 to 35 degrees.
• Ball condition. A hard, new ball carries further than one that’s been in play a while.
• Altitude. Grounds at elevation, in Johannesburg or parts of the Caribbean, sit in thinner air that adds metres to a big hit.
• Wind. A following wind can add real distance on its own.

The evolution of power hitting

Modern T20 bats carry bigger sweet spots and thicker edges than bats from twenty years ago. Add in training programs built around rotational power and strength work, and today’s batters are simply better equipped to hit for distance than any generation before them. Average six distances in professional T20 cricket have climbed steadily over the past decade, and there’s no sign of that reversing.