Rajasthan Royals’ 15-year-old wunderkid Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has mesmerised one and all with his hitting prowess in IPL 2026. And on Wednesday, he produced arguably the innings of the season, scoring 97 runs from just 29 balls in the Eliminator against the Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Now, former Australia all-rounder and current LSG Director of Cricket Tom Moody has crowned the teenager the ‘Don Bradman of T20 cricket’. Moody said that the level of dominance displayed by the teenager was unlike anything ever seen before in cricket.
Sooryavanshi sends Sunrisers packing
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s monster show against SRH was built on the back of his powerful powerplay assault. In the third over of the match, he hit Pat Cummins for three sixes in a row and was batting on 60 from just 20 balls at the end of the powerplay.
Sooryavanshi hit a total of 12 sixes on Wednesday, 8 in the powerplay and 4 after, to narrowly miss out on Chris Gayle’s record of the fastest century in IPL history.
Following his knock, Dhruv Jurel contributed with a 20-ball fifty as well, but the remaining RR batter just chipped in with cameos to take the team to 243.
SRH’s fancies of chasing the total down ended when Jofra Archer dismissed their top three within the powerplay itself. From there, it never really mattered who got how many as RR stormed into Qualifier 2 with a 47-run win.
“We’ve seen amazing things, but not to this extent” - Moody
Moody spoke on ESPNCricinfo and said that it was basically impossible to wrap one’s head around the brilliance of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. Moody said that no player had ever dominated any form of cricket like this, even as full-grown adults.
Moody went on to draw a parallel with Don Bradman’s absolute dominance over the cricket world in the 1920s and the 1930s.
“I’m sort of trying to get my head around how to explain it. The only way to explain it is to ask someone to watch it and come up with their own description, because we’re witnessing something I don’t think we’ve seen in our lifetime in this format of the game, or even any format of the game. We’ve seen amazing things, but not to this extreme," Moody said.
"The only thing I can take it back to is what Bradman was doing, Bradman nearly averaged 100 in Test cricket, and the drop-off to the next best was around 60, so that’s the separation we’re talking about. It’s that in T20 cricket at the age of 15," he added.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in IPL 2026
In this year’s IPL, and especially in his innings on Wednesday, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi broke a plethora of records on his way to leading the Orange Cap race.
With 680 runs in 15 matches, Sooryavanshi has once again reclaimed the Orange Cap and has at least one more chance to increase his run tally. His strike rate has been an amazing 243, making him the first player to score 600 or more runs at a strike rate of 200 in a T20 tournament.
His 65 sixes also broke Chris Gayle’s long-standing record for the most sixes in an IPL season.
Also Read: Ex-CSK batter advises Yashasvi Jaiswal to leave Rajasthan Royals amid Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's rise
