Sometimes it's an injury or illness that causes you to confront your own mortality. Other times, it's Travis Head.
Watch him as he ker-thumps his 60th boundary this IPL, in the next innings he plays, probably. The guy has 324 runs so far, off 150 deliveries faced. Both he and Virat Kohli have a century and two fifties each. Jos Buttler has two centuries from seven innings. Ruturaj Gaikwad, Marcus Stoinis, and Rohit Sharma have also hit a hundred apiece. But so has Sunil Narine.
Yet, while many others have contributed, it is Head who has led the ludicrous hitting this season. And Head who has been involved in matches that saw:
- the highest total in franchise cricket history (287 for 3 vs RCB)
- most runs in a powerplay (125 vs Delhi Capitals)
- most boundaries in a T20 (81 vs RCB)
- highest and second-highest T20 match aggregates (549 SRH vs RCB, and 523 SRH vs MI)
It's not just mad.
This is obscene.
Look, I like to think of myself as an open-minded person who clocks the world as constantly changing and understands it is up to me to keep up.
I was 19 when the IPL began. And back then I was super down for a league based in South Asia that attracted the best talent from around the planet.
I was even into T20 totals of around 220. "Wow, fun," I'd have said. "Exceptional batting. Love that from time to time."
These, apparently, were the good days, in which I enjoyed change and was part of the wave. Now we are stepping into a new reality, where, oh look, batters are smashing every other ball to the boundary. A bowling economy rate a shade less than ten is pretty decent.
And wait, crowds are still flocking to venues. People are still cheering. Younger people than me. Do they not realise that these many sixes devalue boundaries completely? Do they not understand that bowlers' dignity is important? That they now live in a reality in which if you leak two boundaries an over, you're doing okay?
I'm sorry. I try to be open. But I cannot abide this. It's too many boundaries, too many mad chases, too much rampage batting. And I hate that I think this way. Because it means I have reached the limit of my progressivism and have entered the lame decline into irrelevance.
Where will it stop now? Is there a time in my life in which I will dig my heels in on there being no more than 14 genders, while younger people are clamouring for long-overdue change?
Am I the uncle now?
Perhaps, as the tournament rolls on, the squares all over India will wear and spinners will become more effective.
Or maybe it will be decided that 250 is an acceptable T20 total, because what are joys like tense passages of play, or bowlers being difficult to decipher, or even kissing your kids good night, or going for a walk with your parents, against Travis Head routinely smash-and-grabbing 50 runs in 15 balls?