Fours and sixes should not be counted as the same thing

Boundary percentage lumps together two skills that work against different fields and predict completely different innings.

A batter finishes with a boundary percentage of twenty-two. Useful, apparently. Except two players can arrive at that figure by opposite routes, and the routes tell you far more than the number does. One hit eleven fours and one six. The other hit three fours and eight sixes. They will be discussed as though they did the same job.

They did not, and the difference shows up the moment a field changes.

Four-hitting is a gap skill. It needs a ball placed between fielders along the ground or just over the ring, which means it works best when the field is up and it dries up almost completely once the boundary riders come out. A batter whose scoring is four-heavy is enormously effective in the powerplay and quietly ineffective from the eighth over, because the same shots now find a sweeper and become singles.

Six-hitting is a clearance skill and it is close to indifferent to fielders. It needs a length the batter can get under and enough bat speed to carry sixty-odd yards. A six-heavy player is comparatively poor in the powerplay, where the ball is hard and moving and the lengths are fuller, and he becomes lethal in the middle overs against a soft ball and a spread field, which is the exact phase where the four-hitter has stopped functioning.

So a squad needs both, distributed correctly, and a single boundary percentage tells a selector nothing about whether he has them.

There is a further wrinkle that I find genuinely interesting. Six-hitting has much higher variance, because the same shot that clears the rope by five yards is caught at long-off when the contact is a fraction lower. Four-hitting is more reliable but capped. Which means a side chasing a large total should be loading up on six-hitters and accepting the collapses, while a side defending a par score should want the steadier route.

Almost every team picks the same batting group for both jobs and then talks about intent.

Split the columns. Publish fours per ball and sixes per ball separately, by phase, and half of the arguments about who should bat where would answer themselves.