Rajasthan Royals’ 15-year-old prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi produced one of the most astonishing batting performances in IPL history during the 2026 Eliminator, punishing Sunrisers Hyderabad with a blistering 97 from only 29 deliveries. Batting at Mullanpur for RR on a surface that offered little resistance, the teenager turned the contest into a one-sided demolition, striking with fearless intent and generating power-hitting at will. His innings featured a barrage of 12 sixes, each one landing with enough force and timing to unsettle even the most experienced bowling minds. Sunrisers’ plans collapsed repeatedly, and the chase of answers only made the impact of Sooryavanshi’s hitting grow louder.
Pat Cummins, one of the leaders in SRH’s attack, bore a particularly heavy share of the damage, conceding four of those sixes to the 15-year-old and finishing with figures of 0 for 64 in his four overs. While Sooryavanshi fell agonisingly short of a landmark century, his dismissal on 97 still left him just one strike away from breaking Chris Gayle’s celebrated record for the fastest IPL hundred, set in 2013 with a 30-ball ton. Even without reaching three figures, the innings reshaped the IPL record book in multiple ways, including a milestone that had stood for years.
Sooryavanshi surpassed Chris Gayle’s long-held benchmark for the most sixes in a single IPL season by a player aged 14 years or more, stretching his total to 65 maximums to move clear of the pack. In the comparison of IPL season totals, he now leads with 65* in 2026, ahead of Gayle’s 59 from 2012 and Andre Russell’s 52 in 2019. The teenager also climbed to the top of the all-time list for powerplay scoring in a single IPL season, overtaking David Warner’s previous mark from 2016. Sooryavanshi’s powerplay tally reads 490* for 2026, with Warner on 467 from 2016 and Travis Head on 402 from 2024.
The dominance didn’t fade once the ball started swinging into the first phase of the innings. Against SRH in the Eliminator, Sooryavanshi struck eight sixes inside the powerplay—the most ever recorded in overs 1 to 6 in an IPL innings. The list of highest powerplay sixes in the opening six overs includes Sanath Jayasuriya’s seven versus CSK in 2008, seven by Jos Buttler against DC in 2018, seven by Jonny Bairstow against RCB in 2022, and seven by Abhishek Sharma versus PBKS in 2026. Sooryavanshi’s eight stood out even among that group of notable power-hitting displays.
Another historic feature of the knock was how often he reached the ten-plus sixes threshold in IPL innings within a single season. He became the first batter in IPL history to land 10 or more sixes in an IPL innings three separate times in the same season. In terms of the most times players have hit 10+ sixes in a single IPL innings, the numbers now show Chris Gayle with four, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi* with four, Abhishek Sharma with two, and Finn Allen with two. His sheer volume of boundary hitting also carried into the knockout stage, where his 11-plus sixes in the playoff clash set a new standard for the most sixes in an IPL playoff innings—his 11* against SRH in 2026.
That record-setting trend continued across the broader statistics of IPL 2026. Sooryavanshi now holds the distinction of being the highest-scoring uncapped batter in a single IPL season, with 680* for RR in 2026. He sits above Yashasvi Jaiswal’s 625 from 2023 and Shaun Marsh’s 616 for PBKS in 2008. He also matched his own personal mark for the most sixes struck by an Indian batter in a single IPL innings, posting 12 against SRH in 2026—an achievement that includes his 12 also in the 2026 Eliminator. The Indian-batter list for most sixes in an IPL innings now reads: 12 by Vaibhav Sooryavanshi versus SRH in 2026, 12 by Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in the 2026 Eliminator, and 11 by Murali Vijay versus RR in 2010.
For much of the night, Rajasthan looked destined for an even greater total. After moving to 180 for 2 in 13 overs, RR were on track for a score that would have felt almost inevitable with Sooryavanshi at the crease. His opening partner Yashasvi Jaiswal was effectively reduced to a spectator at the non-striker’s end as the teenager struck balls into every corner of the ground, turning the match into a spectacle centred entirely on his bat. Yet the slow walk back to the pavilion after his dismissal carried its own message—despite rewriting records and delivering one of the defining innings of IPL 2026, the 15-year-old looked visibly disappointed at falling short of something even bigger.
