The stature of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi the batter keeps getting higher with each passing match. It was in the eliminator against SRH, that he toyed with the opposition to score 97 from 29, and on the night of the qualifier 2 against GT, he came up with a much more restrained, smart effort to score 50 from 31 deliveries. Still quite pacy, but this is not what 15-year-old is known for; a strike-rate of under 200 in almost criminal.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi shows class
But not in this case. On Saturday, he just showed that he has a mature head on his shoulders, and if demand be, he can cut down on his shots, block a few, look for singles, and deal in fours. In what was his 6th 50+ score in IPL 2026, Sooryavanshi just hit a couple of sixes until he reached the milestone, and ran 13, to reach his slowest 50 ever. The previous slowest was in 27 deliveries against CSK last year.
Perhaps that was the need of the hour. It wasn’t the same Mullanpur pitch, that was used for the Hyderabad match. The wicket was two-paced and all the batters had a tough time negotiating the pace and bounce. Truth be told, Sooryavanshi looked the most comfortable with that. What was the highlight of the innings was, despite being an excellent puller of the cricket ball, he managed to resist the temptation of compulsively going for the shot.
Eventually, he did pick up the SR after reaching the half-century, and eventually got out for 96 in 47 deliveries, just four runs short of his 3rd IPL ton. By then, he had added five more sixes in his innings.
Records keep tumbling
Earlier, the kid had surpassed David Warner’s total for 467 runs in powerplay, and now in this innings, became the first one to surpass 500 runs in the PP. Another significant record to his name is, he took the least number of deliveries to reach 1000 runs in the league; only 440. The second fastest on the list is Andre Russell (545), followed by Tim David (560).
- Fewest balls faced to reach 1000 IPL runs
- 440 – Vaibhav Sooryavanshi
- 545 – Andre Russell
- 560 – Tim David
- 575 – Travis Head
- 575 – Phil Salt
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