While the poor scores in every match of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) was the talk of the town for which it was severely criticised initially, the cash-rich event suddenly turned out to be the ‘tournament of run fest.’ The sixth edition of BPL saw two largest scores in the tournament’s history—239 by Rangpur Riders and 237 by Chittagong Vikings and plenty of 180 plus total after the first week, making this edition so far a most successful tournament in terms of scoring rate per match.

So far five centuries were registered, the most in any edition surpassing the four in the inaugural and second edition of BPL in 2012 and 2013. Amongst the five centurions, Chris Gayle’s name is still absent even though he is the highest centurion of the BPL history with five under his belt. Gayle’s Rangpur teammate Rilee Rossouw is the only batsman who scored 514 runs so far in the ongoing BPL. There was another side of the coin also—out of five hat-tricks in the tournament history, this edition till now presented three hat-tricks by Aliss Islam and Andre Russel of Dhaka Dynamites and Wahab Riaz of Comilla Victorians.

However the revival started in Sylhet after the first phase of Dhaka, when every team got it tough to score at least 150. The high score in the first phase in Dhaka was Dhaka Dynamites 192 and no team other than Dhaka could go past 180. But Sylhet phase changed the scenario as all of the team more or less started getting 180 plus regularly and the first 200 plus score of the tournament was registered there.

But true run fest was in Chittagong. It looked scoring 200 is not impossible task but more importantly the local batsmen started getting runs more often at a strike rate over 150. That’s the thing that was surprising given Bangladeshi batsmen’s inability to keep strike rate over 150 in T20 cricket regularly.

“That’s why it is imperative to prepare a wicket conducive to the batsmen in the T20 cricket because when a batsman gets runs, his confidence soars up automatically,” said Gazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu, the former skipper of Bangladesh.

When run making was tougher in slow and low wicket, Bangladeshi batsmen’s struggle showed as to why they were vulnerable in T20 cricket. And even in batting paradise, they failed to maintain a healthy strike more often because of their lack of habit to play in the wicket conducive to the batsmen regularly.

“When you don’t get chance to play in good wicket, it is tough to maintain a healthy strike rate always. Look the quality foreign players still get good scores in the slow and low pitch because of not that they know how to play in this sort of wicket but because they are confident about their ability. When you have good strike rate and good runs behind you, it will enhance your confidence and you can back yourself to get runs in any type of wicket,” he added. Apart from just the penultimate day of the Chittagong phase of BPL, the port city saw run fest in every match, no lesser than 170.

But lot of runs in every match is boring, according to AB de Villiers, one of the modern greats of the game. He said there should be fine competition between bat and bowl which can make the contest attractive. “That (Big scores in every match) will be very boring,” de Villiers said. “Every wicket we played all around the world is different. Even in my own country, from Pretoria to Port Elizabeth to Durban, its different wickets all the time. That’s what makes the fun. It’s a skill to learn for players to adapt in different conditions, in different wickets. Sometimes you can go a little bit earlier for shots and be aggressive and sometime you have to absorb the pressure. And that’s part of the fun.”