Dasun Shanaka Backs Vaibhav Sooryavanshi After 583-Run IPL Surge
dasun shanaka pointed to Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s 583 runs in 14 IPL league-phase games in 2026 as the clearest sign that the Rajasthan Royals batter is carrying form well beyond a single hot spell. At 15, he finished the league phase with a strike rate of 232 and 53 sixes, six short of the IPL all-time record.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in 2026
Sooryavanshi’s numbers put the season in plain view: 583 runs, 14 games, 232 strike rate. He did it with volume and speed, and the six-hitting stood out just as much as the run total.
The 53 sixes were the most eye-catching part of the tally because they left him only six short of the IPL all-time record. That is the edge in the story now: the season did not stop at one milestone, and the pace of scoring stayed high over the full league phase.
He was still 13 when Rajasthan Royals picked him in the IPL mega auction in November 2024 for Rs 1.1 crore. He then debuted in the 2025 season and hit a century against Gujarat Titans, giving the 2026 output a clear line of progression rather than a one-off burst.
Rajasthan Royals and the 2025 season
The Royals bought a teenager, and he arrived in the next season with a century against Gujarat Titans. In 2026, he added a far larger body of work: 583 runs across 14 league-phase games, with no sign of the scoring slowing down as the matches stacked up.
Jasprit Bumrah and Kagiso Rabada were treated with disdain by Sooryavanshi during that run, a useful detail because it shows the scoring came against high-end bowling, not only in easy overs. That kind of output explains why the season is being measured against other early prodigies rather than just against normal teenage form.
Bradman, Tendulkar, and Pelé
The comparison group is a short one. Sachin Tendulkar debuted at 16 in 1989, faced Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis early in his career, and by 18 had scored centuries on Australia’s fast, bouncy pitches, including a hundred at Perth. Pelé was 17 when he scored six goals to help Brazil win its first World Cup in 1958.
Red ball cricket still sits in the way. Sooryavanshi’s first-class batting average is 17 in 8 matches, so the cleaner read on his present level comes from the IPL output, not from trying to force the same verdict across formats. That is the measure that leaves the Royals with a 15-year-old who has already turned a debut season and a second campaign into a serious development case.
