Schrödinger’s six and tiny boundaries ignite debate at Canada’s Super60 T10 in Vancouver
Faf du Plessis, Mississauga Masters bowler Ali Khan and Toronto Sixers batter Kieron Pollard were at the centre of a debate in Vancouver this week after small straight boundaries and sparse crowds in Canada’s Super60 T10 tournament produced disputed scoring and viral footage. A delivery from Khan that sailed over Pollard and into the empty seating at BC Place prompted questions about whether such strikes should be recorded as sixes.
The tournament footage revived the notion of “Schrödinger’s six” — when a ball that has come off the edge of the bat and flown all of 35 metres looks like a six but arguably should not be scored as one. The images included the ball kerplunking down vast swathes of unpopulated seats in a 50,000-seater stadium before being retrieved by a minimally bothered fielder, and, on at least one occasion, what was recorded on highlights was a wide plus four rather than a six because a six can only be struck off the bat. “It doesn’t look like proper cricket,” Du Plessis said.
Sam Billings’ curt, now-deleted social-media reply, “Bills to pay, brother,” was followed by a longer post on X: “Man has a job. Man has a family. Man gets paid for job to provide for family. Family is happy. The end.” Attempts to gather on-the-record reaction from multiple players who took part in the tournament drew no volunteers, the writer reports.
Asked for his view, Du Plessis initially offered a measured reply, saying: “The guys out there say it’s a great competition, that it’s fun because obviously Canada is a great place, Vancouver is a great city and it’s an experience playing in that stadium.” He acknowledged the appeal of destination events while outlining differing priorities at various career stages.
Du Plessis expanded on those career choices in a longer answer: “Well the destination is important. Some guys would go: ‘Where’s great golf courses? And they’d go: ‘You know, Dubai is great. I can play golf every day. Or Europe – Ireland, there’s some great golf courses.’ I’m not a massive golfer but golf is like a disease to some of these guys at the moment. Everyone just wants to be a professional golfer. “It depends on where you are in your career and what your priorities are,” he adds about the myriad franchise lives you can lead. “Post stopping playing international cricket, my priorities were to play in the best competitions around the world because that was now my version of international cricket, so you had the IPL, The Hundred, The Big Bash and the SA20 … and then you’d look at the gaps and your other commitments and maybe go and play in the Bangladesh Premier League or the IL20.”
The writer contrasts the spectacle of manufactured high scoring in short-form exhibition formats with a different type of stadium drama, recalling when Razaullah “breathed much needed life into and nearly changed the outcome of the third England-Pakistan Test at Edgbaston.” Du Plessis also voiced a more general concern about calendar congestion: “Very easily you can play so much cricket in these days of T20 cricket” and added, “I think there’s one thing that’s most important for players that have the luxury of choosing where they want to play – it’s the ability to say no.”
When asked whether he would consider the event for next year’s schedule, Du Plessis smiled: “I’d be stoked to bat there,” he grinned. “The boundaries would be so small it’d be good for me as I’m getting older. I could get a 17-ball century! Yes, that would be so good.”