Highest Twenty20 chases of all time
Beefed up bats, shrunk grounds as if on substance abuse and moreover above all, the lightning-fast evolution in terms of batting skill throughout the world, be it the sheer muscle of Andre Russell, or AB de Villiers' cheekiness or Jos Buttler's masterclasses in maneuvering the ball in areas devoid of fieldsmen, all the factors have teamed up to conjure a massive conspiracy theory to put bowlers out of the contest and make batsmen the prima donna of the show.
Gone are the times when bowlers felt safe on the back of a good first innings show by their batsmen, because in modern cricket, what goes around, comes around, often in awfully painful proportions.
The Vitality Blast 2018 is statistically the quickest scoring Twenty20 competition in the world so far, with average run rate hovering frighteningly close to nine runs an over. Ineffective English pitches and majority of the small host grounds added to the revolutionary wave of positive cricket all through England propagated by the exploits of the national side have meant that scoring rates throughout the league have been stratospheric.
On the account of that, we look at the massive batting advantage in recent times in terms of the highest team totals when batting second.
#5 Birmingham Bears: 5/231 vs Northamptonshire at Birmingham, 2018
Riding on the back of an attacking spree by South Africa's first Twenty20 star Richard Levi, the Northants put up a match-winning score of 231 in the North Group match of the Vitality Blast, in doing so they broke their own highest score, 5/224 made all the way back in 2005.
Hundred odd minutes later they walked off the field with relieved but deflated spirits, as a rejuvenated Ian Bell helped the Bears match Northants' total for every run. His 131 off just 61 deliveries, laced with seven belligerent sixes far from his traditional self got the Bears on the very verge of victory but with two runs needed off as many deliveries in the end.
But then Colin de Grandhomme got himself out and Aaron Thomson and Grant Elliot could only scamper for a single off the last ball of a brilliant final over by Nathan Buck, who gave away nine in the concluding over of a match that had seen 453 runs amassed in the previous 39 overs. The match ended in stalemate and in accordance with the ECB regulations, both teams were awarded a point each rather than the traditional Super-Over tie breaker.