How to Hit a Six in Cricket: Pick the Ball, Not the Swing

Most advice on how to hit a six in cricket is about the swing. Grip harder, follow through higher, get stronger. That is the smaller half of it. The bigger half is choosing which ball to attack, because some deliveries can be hit for six by a club player with ordinary forearms and some cannot be hit for six by anyone, no matter how fast the bat is moving.

The short answer

To hit a six in cricket you need three things at once: a ball that is already travelling roughly where you want to send it, a still head at the moment you commit, and contact slightly under the middle of the ball so it climbs instead of skidding. The ball has to clear the boundary without touching the ground. Ball selection matters more than bat speed, which is why good players hit sixes off two or three deliveries an over and leave the rest alone.

What counts as a six

Worth getting the law straight before the technique, because scoring confusion loses people runs.

Six is awarded when the ball crosses the boundary without touching the ground after the batter hits it.
If it bounces once inside the rope and then crosses, it is four. One bounce is the whole difference.
If a fielder catches the ball but is touching or beyond the boundary while in contact with it, the boundary is awarded. That is six, not out.
A six off a no ball is six runs plus the one run penalty for the no ball, so seven off the over, and the ball is bowled again.
Sixes are credited to the batter, so they count toward a strike rate. Overthrows that reach the rope are four and are not the batter's shot.

The practical upshot: anything that goes up and lands beyond the rope is six, and anything hit flat and hard that pitches first is four. A lower, flatter swing gets you more fours. A swing that gets under the ball gets you sixes. They are different shots and you should know which one you are playing.

The three balls that actually go for six

Nearly every answer to how to hit a six in cricket starts here, with the delivery rather than the batter. There are three types of ball that clear the rope often enough to be worth attacking.

Full and straight

A ball pitched up near the batter's feet, on or near the stumps, is the easiest six in cricket. It arrives with its own momentum, it is close enough to reach without lunging, and the straight hit sends it back down the ground where the boundary is usually longest but the margin for error is widest. You do not need to generate power. You need to meet it under the ball with a full swing and let the bowler's pace do the work.

Short and sitting up

A ball that pitches halfway down and climbs to chest height can be pulled or hooked square of the wicket. The square boundaries are shorter than straight on most grounds, so this is often the cheapest six available. The thing that goes wrong is the head: players lean back, the ball climbs, and the shot goes up rather than out. Stay side on, let the ball come to you, and hit it from under the armpit, not from over the shoulder.

The slower ball that lands full

A badly executed slower ball or a full toss gives you time, which is the one thing six hitting needs. Because it is slower, you have to supply the power yourself, so the swing has to be a full one rather than a push. This is the ball that gets hit furthest in short formats and also the ball that produces the most caught at long off, because batters start the swing before the ball has arrived.

The balls to leave alone

Good length on the stumps. It is too far away to reach and too close to swing through. Hitting this for six requires a premeditated move down the pitch, which is a different decision entirely.
Full and wide outside off. It looks hittable and it is well outside your arc. The bat arrives across the line of the ball and the result is a slice to deep point or a top edge.
Yorker length. Nothing goes over the rope from the base of the stumps. Dig it out, take one, move on.
Anything when you have just arrived. The first three or four balls of an innings are for seeing the pace. Sixes attempted off ball one are a coin flip.

The swing, in the order it happens

Technique advice usually arrives as a list of ten things. Four of them matter.

Still head, eyes level. Everything else is downstream of this. If your head moves while the ball is in the air, you will not find the middle, and six hitting is unforgiving about the middle.
Weight into the shot, not away from it. Power comes from moving toward the ball. Falling away makes the ball go up rather than out, which is how catches get offered at deep midwicket.
Hands through, not around. The bat should swing along the line the ball is travelling. Across it, you get edges.
Finish high. The high finish is not decoration. It is the evidence that the bat face stayed under the ball through contact, which is what makes the ball climb.

Notice that none of the four is "swing harder". Bat speed with a moving head produces mishits, and mishits in the air are catches.

When a six is worth the risk

This is the part the technique articles skip, and it is where matches are decided. Attempting a six raises your chance of being out on that ball. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how many balls remain.

In a 20 over match, there are 120 balls. You can afford to pick your deliveries, take singles off the rest, and attack two or three balls an over. Wickets are a real resource.
In a 10 over match, there are 60 balls. Boundaries, rather than rotation, carry the score. Leaving a hittable ball alone is a bigger error than getting out trying to hit one.
In a 5 over match, there are 30 balls. You have almost no room to build. Every full ball has to be attacked, because a dot ball costs more than a dismissal does in a game this short.

The rule of thumb: the shorter the format, the cheaper your wicket and the more expensive a dot ball. Six hitting is not recklessness in a 5 over game. It is the correct strategy.

Practising it without a ground

Six hitting needs repetition against a bowler who is trying to stop you, and that is the hard part to arrange. A live match against a real opponent gives you the bit that net practice cannot: a bowler who changes length after you hit one.

That is why play cricket online is built as a live 1v1. One player bats, one bowls, in the browser, in 3D, with no download and no install. You get 5, 10 or 20 over formats, day or night conditions, and in-match chat, and you can either take a quick match against whoever is available or send a private link to a friend. Because a real person is bowling, the length changes when you start finding the rope, which is exactly the problem you need to practise solving.

If you want to drill the swing before you face a person, there are three bot difficulties, Gully, Club and Academy. Bot matches are rated at half weight, are capped at a few per day, and will not carry you past Scale 3. Everything above that needs real opponents.

Once you create a free account and play five rated matches, you get a Scale badge from 0 to 10. Beating stronger opponents moves you up faster, and repeated matches against the same person are damped so you cannot farm a rating off one friend. The leaderboard shows where you sit.

The checklist

Before the bowler runs in, know the answer to three questions. That is the whole of how to hit a six in cricket once the swing is sound.

Which ball am I waiting for? Full and straight, or short and sitting up. Decide before the ball is bowled.
Where is the short boundary? Hit toward it. Fifteen yards of rope is worth more than fifteen pounds of forearm.
How many balls are left? That number, not your confidence, decides whether this is the over to attack.

More on shot selection, field reading and short format scoring over on the blog.