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Does Vaibhav Sooryavanshi have a weakness after all, where the teams might target him in upcoming matches
Emerging star Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has scored 452 runs at a striking rate of 230.61 in IPL.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was always going to be sold as a spectacle. A franchise paying ₹1.1 crore for a teenager will do that. A 35-ball hundred will do that even faster. But the real cricket conversation around him has now moved well beyond age, hype and auction romance. After his start across IPL 2025 and IPL 2026, Sooryavanshi is no longer just a young batter with outrageous confidence. He is a batting problem that bowling units have to solve early, because if they do not, the first six overs can vanish before the innings has even settled.
That is the shift. Bowlers are not dealing with a kid trying to survive at this level. They are dealing with a batter who is already trying to seize control of the most valuable phase of a T20 innings. And the numbers from the IPL 2025 and the IPL 2026 show that this is not random chaos. It is a clear batting pattern.
This is not a purple patch. This is a repeatable scoring profile
Across the data in hand, Sooryavanshi has scored 452 runs off 196 balls. That is a combined strike rate of 230.61. He has hit 36 fours and 42 sixes, which means 78 boundaries in 196 balls. In other words, 39.8% of the balls he has faced have ended in a boundary.
Break that into seasons, and the growth becomes even clearer.
In the IPL 2025, he made 252 runs off 121 balls at a strike rate of 208.26. He hit 18 fours and 24 sixes. His dot-ball percentage was 37.2%.
In the IPL 2026, he has taken that violence to another level: 200 runs off 75 balls at 266.67. He has struck 18 fours and 18 sixes. His dot-ball percentage has dropped sharply to 26.7%.
That fall in dot balls is critical. It tells you he is not just hitting more boundaries. He is also getting stuck less often. That is what turns a dangerous hitter into a more complete powerplay threat.
The powerplay numbers are even more revealing.
- In the IPL 2025, Sooryavanshi scored 144 runs off 70 balls in the powerplay at 205.7.
- In the IPL 2026, he has blasted 179 off 65 in the powerplay at 275.4.
Combined, that is 323 runs off 135 powerplay balls, a strike rate of 239.26. That is where the alarm for bowlers really starts. He is not just scoring quickly. He is front-loading damage into the phase where teams usually want early control.
Sooryavanshi’s batting is not crude. It has shape
The easy mistake is to reduce him to bat speed and bravado. The ball-by-ball numbers say more than that.
In the IPL 2025, his strongest scoring shots include:
- Back-foot pull shot: 61 runs
- Lofted on-drive: 42
- Slog shot: 39
In IPL 2026, the profile broadens further:
- Drive: 68 runs
- Pull: 43
- Slog sweep: 30
- Flick: 26
That is important because it means he is not surviving on one release shot. He can hit on the rise, access the leg side, and still hurt attacks through straighter and off-side arcs. This is one reason he feels so disruptive early in the innings. He is not waiting for a very narrow kind of mistake.
Pace, in particular, has not intimidated him.
Across the two seasons, Sooryavanshi has scored 306 runs off 128 balls against pace at a strike rate of 239.1. Against spin, he has still scored strongly, 130 off 68 at 191.2, but the gap matters. Pace is where he looks most destructive.
The length split adds more detail.
In the IPL 2025:
- Full balls: 62 runs off 24 balls, SR 258.3
- Good length: 86 off 54, SR 159.3
- Yorkers: 1 off 5, one dismissal
In the IPL 2026:
- Full: 63 off 18, SR 350
- Good length: 69 off 31, SR 222.6
- Short of length: 57 off 19, SR 300
This is why bowling to him becomes dangerous the moment a seamer overpitches. Hittable full length has been a gift. He does not need many such balls to flip an over.
The weakness is not “play spin” or “bowl wide outside off”
This is where the deeper analysis matters, because the lazy plans are the wrong plans.
First, the width outside off is not safe. It is fuel. In the IPL 2025, Sooryavanshi scored 119 runs off 52 balls outside off stump at a strike rate of 228.8. In the IPL 2026, that has risen to 112 off 38 at 294.7.
That is not where attacks should live. If anything, repeated width gives him extension, and once he can extend his arms, he does not need bowlers to miss by much.
The more interesting clue comes from tighter channels.
In the IPL 2026, deliveries on the middle stump brought him only 12 runs off 10 balls at a strike rate of 120, with a 60% dot-ball rate. Narrow that down further, and the most useful data point emerges: middle stump on a good length produced only 1 run off 6 balls and a dismissal.
That is not enough to call it a fully exposed technical flaw. But it is enough to call it a strong tactical lead.
The best way to bowl at Sooryavanshi is not to search for magic outside off. It is to take away his extension, crowd his base, and force him to manufacture power rather than collect it.
Spin needs a similar nuance. He can hit spin. That part is obvious. But spin has still produced 5 dismissals, compared to 4 dismissals against pace, despite him facing far fewer balls of spin. So spin is not a blanket answer, but it remains a better wicket-taking matchup than pace if used properly, flatter and tighter rather than floated into the arc.
That leaves the real bowling brief looking far more specific than the clichés around young batters. Do not feed him full balls. Do not give him width. Do not let him see easy swing paths. Bowl hard, good length. Attack off-to-middle or middle lines. Use yorkers as a surprise rather than a search. Make him hit from a cramped base, not a free one.
That is why Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is already such a serious T20 story. He has numbers that scream hype, but underneath them sits something more dangerous: a repeatable scoring pattern that can distort a powerplay on its own. He is still unfinished, yes. He is still a little too boundary-dependent, yes. But he is already advanced enough to make bowling sides rewrite their opening script. And in this format, that is where real batters announce themselves.
