There is a sound every CSK fan knows in their bones. The bat meets the ball, there's half a second of silence while the whole stadium follows it up into the lights, and then — the roar. The whistles. That feeling in your chest that says it's gone.
Here's the funny thing, though: CSK have never really been that team. Say "IPL sixes" to most cricket fans and the names that come flying out are Chris Gayle, Yusuf Pathan, Kieron Pollard, Andre Russell — the pure, terrifying power-hitters who could end a match in three balls. Not one of them ever batted for CSK. Gayle finished with 357 IPL sixes; Russell reached 223 in just 114 matches. The most any CSK batter has hit in yellow is Dhoni's 234. Even as a team, CSK's rate of roughly 6.5 sixes an innings ranks only sixth among the ten current franchises.
So CSK never went shopping for one giant, walking-fireworks-factory kind of hitter. They built it differently: a finisher with ice in his veins, an anchor who could clear the rope when it mattered, top-order men who attacked from ball one, and a middle-overs specialist we'll meet shortly. Six-hitting became a team habit instead of one man's party trick. And when you add it all up, we've heard that sound 1,734 times in regulation innings across the 17 IPL seasons CSK have played.
So whose bat made most of it? Exactly who you think it is: MS Dhoni, with 234 sixes — more than any other batter has hit in yellow. Suresh Raina is next with 181, then Shivam Dube (115), Ruturaj Gaikwad (107) and Ambati Rayudu (94).
But one number can't do justice to all those years of cleared boundaries. So let's walk through the whole thing — the biggest innings, the wildest seasons, the men who own the death overs, and the ones who turned up when it mattered most. Every table below is pulled live from our ball-by-ball database, so it stays true as the story keeps being written. Want every record in one place? Our CSK stats page has them all.
Most sixes for CSK in IPL history
First, the roll of honour. Tap any name to open that player's CSK profile.
Most Sixes for CSK — All-Time Top 10
Take a moment with that top three, because each one tells its own story.
MS Dhoni is 53 sixes clear of second place, and it hardly feels like a coincidence that the man who made finishing an art form owns this list. As you'll see further down, a huge share of those sixes came when the innings was running out of overs and the crowd was on its feet.
Suresh Raina — Mr. IPL, Chinna Thala — hit 181 across 171 matches. Where Dhoni was the closer, Raina was the ruler of the middle overs: 99 of his sixes came between overs 7 and 15, more than any other CSK batter has hit in that phase, and 32 clear of anyone else. That stretch of the innings was his kingdom long before CSK ever needed a specialist for it. Miss him? Of course we do.
Shivam Dube is the plot twist — and the best story on this list. He's on 115 in just 65 matches, a pace neither of the two above him came close to. And he didn't arrive as a six-hitting machine: in 22 IPL innings for RCB and Rajasthan Royals he hit a six every 15 balls, at a strike rate of roughly 120. Then CSK gave him a job — spin basher, the man sent into the middle overs to take the spinners apart — and turned him into something else entirely: a six every 9.9 balls, at a strike rate of about 153. Of his 115 sixes in yellow, 67 have come in the middle overs and none in the powerplay. That isn't luck. That's a role, and CSK's gift for giving a batter one clear job and trusting him to do it. We'll dig into the proof further down.
A small note on counting: this list matches the batting leaderboard on our stats page, so it includes Super Over sixes (Raina's 181 includes one). Every other table in this article counts regulation innings only.
Most sixes in an innings by a CSK batter
Career totals are about staying power. But every fan carries a that night memory — an innings where one batter simply decided the bowlers were beneath him. Here are the wildest six-hitting knocks ever played in yellow:
Most Sixes in an Innings — CSK Batters
The king of them all is Murali Vijay: 127 off 56 balls against Rajasthan Royals at Chepauk in 2010, with 11 sixes. Eleven. In one innings, at home, with the whole stadium going out of its mind. Sixteen years on, no CSK batter has reached even ten. It's the kind of knock that gets retold to people who weren't there, and grows a little with every retelling — except here the scorecard backs the legend.
Four players sit one rung below with nine sixes each. Michael Hussey did it in 116 off 54 in the very first IPL season, 2008, at Mohali — proof of how early this team started making noise. Brendon McCullum (100 off 56, 2015) and Robin Uthappa (88 off 50 against RCB, 2022) are there too. And then there's Ruturaj Gaikwad, who hit nine sixes in a magnificent 92 off 50 against Gujarat Titans in 2023 — and still ended up on the losing side. Nine sixes, a brilliant knock, and the match slipped away anyway. That one stings.
Two more knocks deserve their own moment:
- Shane Watson in the 2018 final. Wankhede. A final. CSK's comeback season after two years away. And Watson goes out and hits eight sixes in a 117 off 57 to win it. No CSK batter has hit more sixes in a final innings — full stop.
- Urvil Patel at Chepauk, 2026. In a season that gave us precious little to smile about, this was a lightning bolt: eight sixes in a 65 off just 23 balls against Lucknow Super Giants, in a chase CSK won. His fifty came in just 13 balls — the fastest half-century in CSK history. The same six count as Watson's final hundred, in 34 fewer balls. If you were there, you probably still can't fully explain it.
Most sixes by CSK in a team innings
Then there are the nights the entire lineup decides to party at once. These are the biggest six-hitting team performances in CSK history:
Most Sixes by CSK in a Single Innings
The record is 18 sixes, at Eden Gardens against KKR in 2023, in a total of 235 — a 49-run win. There's a special joy in watching CSK do that to a ground that is loud, proud and very much not on our side.
But the real treat is sitting right behind it: the 2010 game against Rajasthan Royals, with 17 sixes in a 246-run innings. Yes — the Vijay masterclass again. Eleven of those 17 came off one bat. That's how close a single innings came to being the team's whole story.
Sixes by season: the year-by-year story
Now zoom out. Here is every CSK season, with the team's six count, the rate per match, and the three men who led the charge. A trophy marks each year we lifted the cup.
CSK Sixes in Every IPL Season
Regulation innings only. CSK did not play in 2016 and 2017 (suspension). Trophy marks title-winning seasons.
Read it top to bottom and it almost works like a diary of the franchise.
2018 is the loudest season in CSK history. 145 sixes — nobody else is close. Remember the mood: CSK were back after two years away, the jokes about an "old" squad were everywhere, and then Watson (35), Rayudu (34) and Dhoni (30) went out and hit the ball into the next postcode all season long. The trophy at the end felt like the only possible ending.
2023 is the modern peak. 133 sixes, led by Shivam Dube's 35, and a fifth title to cap it off. If you want to see what a fully-firing CSK batting unit looks like, those two seasons are the ones to bookmark.
The quiet years hurt a little. 2009 (73) and 2020 (75) are the lowest totals on the list. And 2020 — that strange, joyless season in the UAE when CSK missed the playoffs for the first time — feels, on the page, exactly the way it felt on the screen: subdued.
And one more thing, worth saying out loud: sixes don't win titles on their own. CSK lifted the trophy in 2011 with just 91 — one of the lower totals in the table. The bowlers, the fielding, the calm heads in tight moments: that's the rest of the story, and it's what makes this franchise what it is.
There's one more way to read that table: who was CSK's top hitter most often?
Most Seasons as CSK's Top Six Hitter
It's Shivam Dube — four seasons, and four in a row: 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. For four straight seasons, nobody else in yellow hit more sixes than he did, and the spin-basher role we'll get to below is exactly why. Behind him, Dhoni topped CSK's six chart three times (2011, 2013 and 2019) — the finisher leading the whole team's list, which tells you everything about how many balls he cleared. Faf du Plessis did it twice, in 2020 and 2021, sharing the 2021 crown with Ruturaj Gaikwad on 23 each. And in 2026, it was Sanju Samson's turn, a fresh name on a list that had carried the same one for four years.
Where two batters finish level on top, both get the credit.
Most sixes in a single IPL season by a CSK player
The table above shows who led each year. This one asks a fiercer question: whose single season was the wildest of all?
Most Sixes in One IPL Season — CSK Players
Two names share the record at 35: Shane Watson in 2018 and Shivam Dube in 2023. Watson took 15 innings to get there; Dube needed only 14. And notice the pair just behind them: DR Smith with 34 in 2014, and Ambati Rayudu with 34 in that same glorious 2018. When Rayudu could hit 34 and still not top his own team's list, you know how stacked that batting order was.
Who hits a six most often? Balls per six
Here's where Dube's story gets really interesting. Career totals favour the men who played for a decade. To find who is truly the most dangerous — who makes the ball disappear most often — we flip the question: how many balls does each batter need to hit a six? Lower is scarier. Only batters with at least 500 legal balls faced for CSK are included, so no small-sample flukes.
Best Six-Hitting Rate for CSK (Balls per Six)
Shivam Dube is the most frequent six-hitter in CSK history: one every 9.9 balls. Think about that. Roughly every couple of overs, the ball is landing in the stands. Albie Morkel — a name that still earns a knowing smile from the old guard — is second at 11.9, with Shane Watson third at 13.5.
And Dhoni? One every 14.9 balls, which looks quiet beside Dube's 9.9. But that comes from more than 3,400 balls faced, across an entire era. Staying that lethal for that long is the whole point of him.
Shivam Dube: how CSK built a spin basher
We met the transformation earlier: a six every 15 balls before CSK, one every 9.9 since. Here is the proof of where it happens — because the phase numbers give the whole game away.
Of Dube's 115 sixes for CSK, 67 came in the middle overs (7–15), 48 came at the death — and none in the powerplay. He has faced just 13 balls in the first six overs in yellow. That is not an accident. That is a job description.
The middle overs are where spinners do their work and where a T20 innings can quietly go to sleep — and Dube walks in specifically to wake it up. Over that phase he has hit a six every 11.2 balls at a strike rate of 142. Here is where that puts him among CSK's middle-overs hitters:
Most Sixes in the Middle Overs (7–15) for CSK
Only Raina is ahead of him — and Raina needed 2,015 balls to hit his 99 in this phase, while Dube got to 67 in 749. Dhoni, the greatest finisher of them all, has 48 in the middle overs off 1,675 balls, because that was never his job. It's a lovely piece of role clarity: Dhoni finishes, the top order sets the pace, and Dube is the one sent in to attack the middle.
You can see how well it worked in the season numbers. In 2023, 24 of his 35 sixes came in the middle overs — the same season he equalled Watson's single-season record. When a batter knows exactly what he's there to do, and is trusted to do it, the results stop looking accidental. That is how you get 115 sixes in just 65 matches.
The death-overs and powerplay six-hitters
Where in the innings do all these sixes come from? The answer explains a lot about what CSK feels like.
Most Sixes in the Death Overs (16–20) for CSK
Look at the top of that list. Dhoni has 186 death-overs sixes. The next man, Ravindra Jadeja, has 66. That's not a lead — that's a different sport. When the scoreboard was tense, the required rate was climbing and the crowd had gone from noise to something closer to prayer, this was the man they wanted walking out, and the numbers say they were right. Behind him come Shivam Dube (48), Dwayne Bravo (41) and Raina (40).
The powerplay, though, belongs to a different kind of hero:
Most Powerplay Sixes (Overs 1–6) for CSK
Ruturaj Gaikwad leads with 45, ahead of Raina (41), Faf du Plessis (35), Murali Vijay (33) and Shane Watson (31) — a list of openers and top-order men who made a habit of attacking from ball one. It's a lovely balance, really: the top order attacks early and sets the stage, and then the finisher walks out to a roar and closes the book.
Most sixes in IPL knockouts for CSK
Anyone can hit a six in April. The knockouts are different — the pressure is heavier, one bad night ends the season, and every big hit feels twice as loud. CSK have played 26 knockout matches (qualifiers, eliminators, semi-finals and finals), and here is who cleared the rope when it counted most:
Most Sixes in IPL Knockouts — CSK Players
This is Suresh Raina's stage. 40 sixes in 22 knockout games — 17 clear of Dhoni's 23 — is the kind of number that reminds you why he earned the reputation he did. Big-game player is a phrase people throw around; here it is in black and white.
But look at Shane Watson: 16 sixes in just five knockout innings. That is more than three a game, every time the season was on the line. Murali Vijay (14) and Faf du Plessis (11) are up there too, and Dhoni's 23 came across 21 knockout games — the finisher, calm as ever.
And the individual knocks are the stuff of legend:
Most Sixes in an Innings in IPL Knockouts — CSK Batters
Watson's eight in the 2018 final sit at the top, and a few of the others are worth stopping on. Vijay's 95 off 52 in the 2011 final — six sixes — helped CSK to a second straight title. And then there's Raina's 87 off just 25 balls in the 2014 Qualifier 2, six sixes in a blur of a knock… in a match CSK lost. It's the kind of innings that deserved a winning ending and didn't get one. Some of these numbers come with a small ache attached.
Most sixes in IPL finals for CSK
And then the biggest stage of all — the final itself. The nights that define careers.
Most Sixes in IPL Finals — CSK Players
Raina leads with 13 across eight finals — a steady presence every time the trophy was on the line. But the number that stops you is Watson's 12 sixes in just two finals. Twelve, in two games. And Dhoni is right there with 11 across eight, because of course he is. To relive every one of those title deciders, the CSK stats page lists all the finals in one place.
How we count these sixes
Because we care about getting this right, here's the fine print:
- Source: everything comes from ball-by-ball IPL data, recalculated by us — not copied from elsewhere.
- What counts: a delivery where the batter scored six runs off the bat. Sixes hit off CSK's bowlers aren't part of anyone's total here.
- Knockouts: qualifiers, eliminators, semi-finals and finals — 26 matches for CSK. League games are not included.
- Phases: powerplay is overs 1–6, middle overs 7–15, death overs 16–20.
- Regulation innings only: innings, season and phase splits exclude Super Overs. The all-time leaderboard uses the same total as our batting leaderboard, which includes them.
- Balls faced: wides don't count as balls faced; no-balls do.
- Seasons: CSK didn't play in 2016 and 2017 because of the suspension, so those two years are missing from the season table.
Why the sixes matter so much
Sixes are the loudest thing in T20 cricket. They break bowling plans, they change the maths of a chase in a single ball, and — if we're honest — they're a big part of why so many of us fell for this game in the first place.
What CSK's history shows is two kinds of fearlessness working side by side: a top order that attacks early, and a finisher whose calm at the death became legend. It's the same instinct behind our list of the fastest fifties in CSK history — both are about intent, about a batter walking out and refusing to let the game drift.
So the next time the ball soars into the night at Chepauk and the stadium erupts, remember it isn't just one six. It's the latest line in a story more than 1,700 sixes long.
Nothing sounds quite like a Chepauk crowd watching one sail over long-on. Whistle podu! 🦁
Every table above is generated live from our match database and updates automatically as new matches are added. Explore more on the CSK stats page.