It would seem unbelievable, but former Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) coach Tom Moody has made a very interesting observation on the youngster, drawing a parallel of how significantly dominating Sooryavanshi has been this season compared to other batsmen with Bradman’s heightened feat when put against his peers.
Sooryavanshi is enjoying a record-breaking IPL 2026 season, the zenith of which he hitherto achieved on Wednesday evening in Mullanpur in his first IPL playoffs fixture – Eliminator against Pat Cummins’ SRH.
At the crease for eight overs, Sooryavanshi left even the experienced Cummins clueless about plans as the Australian himself was smoked for 34 runs in his first two overs and scrambled with several field changes.
Sooryavanshi reached his half-century in 16 balls, the joint fastest in an IPL playoffs/knockout match, with the help of eight sixes inside the powerplay. En route to this rampage, the 15-year-old broke Chris Gayle’s record of 59 sixes from 2012 for the most sixes in a single IPL season.
Sooryavanshi came close to breaking Gayle’s famous 30-ball fastest IPL century record but fell short with 97 runs off 29 balls. He later said that he was unaware that he was one shot away from Gayle’s record, as his mindset was only to maximize his time at the crease.
And he did: his 97-run innings included 12 sixes and 5 fours; that is, 92 of his 97 runs came via boundaries.
Tom Moody Draws Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s Parallel With Sir Don Bradman
Vaibhav now sits at the top of the Orange Cap tally with 680 runs. But what stands out even starkly is his jaw-dropping strike rate of 242. Among the top 20 run-scorers in the IPL 2026 so far, apart from Sooryavanshi, only Abhishek Sharma has a strike rate of more than 200, but even Abhishek’s strike rate of 204 is significantly behind the young RR opener’s pace.
The second- and third-placed batsmen on the runs chart, Sai Sudharsan and Heinrich Klaasen, both have strike rates of 160 or lower.
But an even more shocking statistic that highlights Sooryavanshi’s genius well beyond others’ reach is going around on Twitter since last night.
Of the batsmen who have managed a strike rate of over 240 in a single IPL season, the second-most runs scored is only 70 by Romario Shepherd in IPL 2025. This shows how an outlier Sooryavanshi has been this season, amassing over 600 runs at a strike rate of more than 240.
This sort of gap that Sooryavanshi has created with the second-best batsman and other batters this season led to Moody making the youngster’s comparison with Bradman, who had a Test average of 99.94 with nobody near him.
Speaking with ESPNcricinfo, Moody said, “We’re witnessing something I don’t think we’ve seen in our lifetime in this format of the game or even in any format of the game.
“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.”
RR will face Gujarat Titans in Qualifier 2 on Friday in Mullanpur. The winner of Q2 will proceed to the final, slated for Sunday in Ahmedabad, where RCB have already booked one slot.
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