What is a good strike rate in T20 cricket? Real benchmarks from 3,197 seasons

Ask what counts as a good strike rate in T20 and you will get a number somebody remembers: 130, or 140, or whatever the best batter in their childhood happened to average. The number is always stated with confidence and almost never comes with evidence, because the evidence takes work: you need every season, not the famous ones. We happen to have every season. This site rates 3,197 player-seasons from two decades of Indian T20 history to price its draft, and underneath those ratings sits the full public statistical record. So here is the honest, distribution- based answer to what a good strike rate, a good economy rate and a good batting average actually look like, and the one thing every pundit number gets wrong: good has a date on it.

Method, briefly, so the benchmarks mean something. A cameo can print any strike rate it likes, so we only count qualified seasons: 100 or more balls faced for the batting numbers (1,035 seasons qualify) and 20 or more overs bowled for the bowling numbers (954 seasons). Every figure below is a percentile of those real seasons, not a vibe. The full note on sources is on the methodology page.

What is a good strike rate in T20?

Across all nineteen seasons, the median qualified batter strikes at 134.5. That is the exact middle of the sport: half of all real batting seasons land below it. From there the ladder climbs steeply, and it is the ladder, not any single number, that is worth memorising.

Names put flesh on the ladder. Kohli’s 973-run 2016 ran at a strike rate of 152, comfortably top-quarter pace while scoring more than anyone ever has. Buttler’s 863-run 2022, the highest-rated season in the whole game, sat at 149. Andre Russell’s 2019 detonated at 205, past the top-1% line, and the 237.3 ceiling belongs to Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s 776-run 2026, a number so far beyond the distribution that the chart below barely knows what to do with the year that produced it.

Why “good” depends on the year you ask

Here is the part every remembered number misses. The median strike rate is not a constant; it has been sprinting. Watch the middle of the sport move:

Slice it into eras and the drift becomes a cliff. From 2008 to 2013 the median qualified batter struck at 124; from 2014 to 2019 at 133.6; from 2020 to 2026 at 144.7. The last three seasons have medians of 150, 156 and 158. Sit with what that does to every benchmark you have ever heard: an ordinary 2026 batter now scores faster than a top-10% striker did in the league’s first six seasons (150.1 was that era’s top-10% line). A strike rate of 140 was elite in 2011, respectable in 2018, and is now below the median. When somebody tells you what a good strike rate is, the first question worth asking is: in which year?

Why did the middle move? Not because batters suddenly got better at batting; because the economics of an innings changed. Batting orders got deeper, so the cost of getting out fell and the license to swing grew. Par scores crept up, so a run-a-ball forty stopped saving anyone’s evening. Six-hitting went from a specialist’s party trick to a hiring requirement for every slot in the order. Each of those pressures pushed the ordinary season faster, and the distribution obediently followed. This is also the quiet reason old-era seasons hold up so well in season-by-season ratings: a 152 strike rate in 2016, when the median was 130, towers over its year in a way the same number no longer would. The ladder moves. Greatness is measured against where the ladder stood.

The pundit numbers, graded

Armed with the distribution, we can grade the numbers people actually say. “130 is a good strike rate.” True in 2012, when 130 cleared that era’s median with seven runs to spare. Today 130 fails to reach the modern era’s bottom-quarter line of 131; it is a fine number for an anchor and a poor description of “good.” “140 is elite.” It was close, once: 140 cleared the first era’s top-quarter line easily. The modern median of 144.7 has since driven straight past it, so 140 is now, remarkably, slightly below average. “A run a ball is useful lower-order hitting.” A strike rate of 100 has been bottom-10% territory in every era the league has played; it was never really true. “Under 8 is a good economy.” This one has aged in reverse: 8.0 was mediocre in 2012, when the median was 7.4, and is now better than average, because the 2026 median has ballooned to 9.7. The lesson is not that pundits are wrong. It is that every one of these numbers was true the year its speaker fell in love with it, and the sport kept moving.

What is a good economy rate in T20?

Bowling benchmarks run the other way: lower is better, and the ladder reads top down. Across all qualified bowling seasons the median economy is 8.1. Concede less than 7.3 an over across a season and you are in the best quarter; less than 6.7 and you are in the top 10%, the shelf where death-overs contracts and new-ball trust get earned.

The era drift hits bowlers harder than batters, because they are the ones paying for the batting revolution. The 2008-2013 median economy was 7.5; the 2020-2026 median is 8.8; in 2026 alone it was 9.7. An economy of 8 was slightly worse than average in 2012 and is comfortably better than average now. Which reframes the legends: Sunil Narine’s 2012 (24 wickets at 5.47) and Malinga’s 2011 (28 at 5.95) did not just beat the going rate of their day; they sit below even their own era’s top-10% line of 6.4, and that era set the strictest elite bar the league has ever had. Wickets have their own ladder, by the way: the median qualified season takes 11, fifteen puts you in the top quarter, nineteen in the top 10%, and the record is 32, held jointly by Bravo’s 2013 and Harshal’s 2021.

What is a good batting average in T20?

The most misunderstood number in the format. Across qualified seasons the median average is 29.8, the top quarter starts at 37.5, and the top 10% at 46.4, so yes, averaging 40 over a season is genuinely excellent, roughly a top-15% outcome. But average is the one benchmark you must never read alone, because T20 will happily sell you a high average built out of slow selfish runs. The format’s real currency is the pairing: an average near 30 at a strike rate near 150 is worth more to a team than 45 at 120 in most roles, and reading that trade-off is most of what separates people who understand the format from people who memorised one number in 2012.

And when both numbers arrive together, you get the seasons this database rates at the very top. Kohli’s 2016 averaged 81.1, ten runs beyond the all-time top-1% line, at top-quarter speed. Buttler’s 2022 paired 57.5 with 149. Those are not good seasons. They are the reason the word needed a ladder in the first place.

How many runs make a good season?

Volume deserves its own ladder, because run tallies are the numbers headlines are built from and they mislead in a specific way. Among qualified seasons the median tally is 285; 396 puts a batter in the top quarter and 501 in the top 10%. Cross 500 and you have done something only 104 of 1,035 qualified seasons managed; cross 700 and you join a club of fifteen. The all-time summit is Kohli’s 973, which is why that season keeps appearing in every list this site has ever published. The mislead is the middle: a 450-run season sounds enormous on commentary and sits barely above the top quarter’s doorstep, while a 380-run season at a 170 strike rate might have won more matches than either. Volume tells you a batter kept his place all season. The rate numbers tell you what he did with it, which is why this page put them first.

How to read a stat line in five seconds

The ladders are worth memorising because they turn any stat line into a verdict almost instantly. Take a real one: 625 runs at a strike rate of 163. Volume: well beyond a full season’s work for most batters. Speed: 163, a whisker off the all-time top-10% line. Verdict in five seconds: an elite attacking season, and indeed that line is Jaiswal’s 2023, a pick in the data’s all-time XI. Now a trickier one: 616 runs at 135. Big volume again, but 135 is a hair above the all-time median and below it for the season it happened in, so the five-second read is “accumulator, role-dependent, check what it cost.” That is KL Rahul’s 2022, and the draft prices it at 23.61 Cr, which is exactly how the game teaches the lesson: volume alone is the most expensive illusion in T20.

Run the same drill on bowling. Twenty-plus wickets: top-10% wicket-taking territory. Economy under 7 in the modern era: rarer than it has ever been (the modern top-10% line is 7.2, against 6.4 in the first era). A season with both, like Chahal’s 27 at 7.75 in 2022 or Bumrah’s 27 at 6.73 in 2020, reads in five seconds as a frontline, price-anything season. The point of benchmarks is not trivia. They are the difference between looking at numbers and reading them.

Why context changes every number

Percentiles are honest, but they are averages of situations, and T20 is a game of situations. A death-overs specialist buys his wickets at a worse economy than a powerplay bowler because he bowls when batting is easiest; a finisher’s strike rate of 170 across 15-ball innings is a different substance from an opener’s 145 across 40-ball ones; a batter on a slow red-soil ground earns every run twice. The ladders above are the map, not the verdict. One more piece of context worth knowing: of the 3,197 seasons in this database, only 159 clear both qualification bars at once, 100 balls faced and 20 overs bowled. Genuinely two-way seasons are about five percent of the sport, which is why the ones that rate well cost so much and why every real XI leans on specialists.

Do these ladders travel to internationals and other leagues? Directionally, yes; numerically, no. Every benchmark on this page is drawn from one competition, the deepest franchise league in the sport, where line-ups are long, boundaries are earned and the batting revolution arrived earliest and hardest. A different league or the international game will have its own medians, shaped by its own pitches and depth. Use these numbers as a spine, not a passport: the shape of the ladder carries everywhere, even where the rungs sit a few runs lower.

The whole page in one table

For the readers who scrolled straight here: every ladder on this page, one line each, from 1,035 qualified batting seasons and 954 qualified bowling seasons across 2008 to 2026. Remember the direction: economy climbs down.

From knowing the numbers to using them

Benchmarks are only fun until someone hands you a budget. Every season discussed on this page is a draftable pick in the game this site exists for: the prices come from the same public records these percentiles do, and the whole draft is one long exam in exactly this skill, telling a 149 that matters from a 149 that does not, in the year it happened, at the price on the card. If you want to feel the difference between reading a ladder and using one, open a draft with the full stat table showing, or take today’s Daily Challenge and see how your read of “good” holds up against everyone else on the same board. The complete guide covers the rest. A good strike rate is 134.5 and climbing. Bring the year with you.