Vaibhav Sooryavanshi lit up the IPL 2026 Eliminator with a stunning 29-ball 97 against Sunrisers Hyderabad in New Chandigarh that propelled Rajasthan Royals (RR) into Qualifier 2. SRH captain Pat Cummins, who opened the bowling and faced the brunt of Sooryavanshi’s explosive batting, said that the 15-year-old doesn’t leave bowlers with too many options.
Of the 97 runs Sooryavanshi made on the night, 31 of them came off Cummins, who started out with a couple of yorkers against Sooryavanshi, the first of which he defended and then managed to squeeze one out for a single. When Sooryavanshi was back on strike one ball later and Cummins missed his yorker, Sooryavanshi lofted it down the ground for his first six. In Cummins’ next over, Sooryavanshi went 4, 6, 6, 6 against him with a wide in between.
“Yeah, he played pretty well. [You] don’t feel like you have too many options,” Cummins said after the match. “Obviously, it’s a really good pitch, but the margins are so small you know. You miss your yorker by a little bit [and] he doesn’t tend to miss them. So yeah fair play.”
Jofra Archer said Sooryavanshi is capable of getting big centuries even in T20s. “It was very exciting. The more runs he scores, the more runs we have to defend, so he can go on and get 150. It’s good for the boys when he gets a lot of runs,” Archer said.
RR captain Riyan Parag, meanwhile, said that Sooryavanshi’s team-mates or coaches don’t need to have too many talks with the youngster.
“That’s the thing we don’t have any conversations,” Parag said at the post-match presentation. “Yeah just leave him alone, let him go and have fun. He likes batting like I’ve said before so we get him a lot of batting practice at the nets and stuff like that and then he goes out and does his thing.”
Sooryavanshi’s knock helped RR post 243 for 8, and Archer’s three early strikes then helped them restrict SRH to 196 to set up a Qualifier 2 clash against Gujarat Titans. That game will also be in New Chandigarh, where RR have four wins in four matches.
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