Is Sooryavanshi The Bradman Of T20s? Legends Stunned By His Unreal Rise

2026-05-28 02:29:47

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The Grade Cricketer, a parody YouTube channel run by two former Australian club cricketers, Ian Higgins and Sam Perry, has become a very popular social media platform in recent years.

Higgins and Perry blend their sharp wit and humour with serious cricket analysis, often leaving their audience in stitches.

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Given their flair for humour, it was hardly surprising that the two Aussies took the mickey out of their compatriot Pat Cummins after the Sunrisers Hyderabad superstar was smashed by Vaibhav Sooryavanshi last month.

Cummins, one of the greatest fast bowlers of this century, was playing his first IPL match of the season on April 25 when he faced the boy wonder from Bihar.

The 15-year-old hit the first ball he faced from the World Cup-winning Australian captain for a six, inflicting the same first-ball six agony on Cummins that Jasprit Bumrah, Trent Boult and Lungi Ngidi, all world-class fast bowlers, had already suffered.

"In many ways, if he (Sooryavanshi) doesn't hit you for a first-ball six, that's like an insult given the company you would be in," Higgins said of Cummins the next morning on The Grade Cricketer.

Had he seen the episode, Cummins probably would have smiled.

But there was no hint of a smile on his face when he was ruthlessly dismantled by the youngster on Wednesday night.

The left-handed opener launched a brutal assault on the Hyderabad bowling attack in the Eliminator. He was especially harsh on Cummins, hitting the right-arm pacer for four sixes, three of which came in back-to-back deliveries.

With a stunning 29-ball 97, Sooryavanshi added a new chapter to his extraordinary IPL journey.

The unassuming youngster also broke Chris Gayle's 12-year record of most sixes in an IPL season with his tally now reaching a staggering 65 from 15 matches.

He also now holds the record for the most runs in an IPL season by an uncapped player, with 688 at 45.33, including four half-centuries and a 37-ball 103.

And he has produced this mountain of runs at an astonishing strike rate of 242.85.

Running out of adjectives

Emerging from a small town in Bihar, Tajpur, Sooryavanshi's incredible numbers on the big stage have left the pundits scrambling for adjectives.

One of the big names who was unable to get his head around the teenager's figures is Jos Buttler.

England's most accomplished T20 batter actually sent a text message to Jofra Archer, jokingly asking his countryman if his Rajasthan Royals teammate was actually AI.

Having played international cricket for 15 years, Buttler finds it absurd that a 15-year-old - with barely any trace of facial hair - has dominated the Who's Who of the sport in the world's biggest T20 franchise league.

Another marquee name who was at a loss for words was Tom Moody, the former Australian all-rounder who was the head coach of Sunrisers Hyderabad when they won the 2016 IPL title.

Having witnessed the brutal annihilation of his former team, Moody spontaneously looked back in history and tried to draw a striking parallel between the IPL wonderkid and Don Bradman, the greatest batsman the world has ever seen.

The iconic Australian's brilliance was such that he retired from the sport in 1948 with an otherworldly Test batting average of 99.94.

None of the great batters - with a minimum of 22 Test appearances - in the 149-year-old history of the game has managed to average more than 60.

Bradman has remained a mythical figure in cricket for his abnormal batting average in his 52-Test career, which saw him accumulate 6996 runs with 29 hundreds, including 12 double hundreds and two triple tons.

According to statistician Charles Davis, none of the legendary athletes, including Pele (football), Michael Jordan (basketball) and Jack Nicklaus (golf), dominated their sports quite like Bradman did in cricket.

For every Australian, Bradman is a folk hero who evokes national pride. So for Moody to compare an uncapped Indian youngster to the most revered Australian is truly incredible.

“I don't think incredible is a strong enough word. 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 on ESPNCricinfo after Sooryavanshi's brilliance set up the Royals' win over Hyderabad in the IPL eliminator.

"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!"

Strike rate and consistency

In the context of T20 cricket, it's the strike rate that defines the greatness of a batter. Sooryavanshi is striking at 242.86 this season, but the history of IPL proves that it's impossible to maintain consistency while scoring at such a pace.

Now, a young boy with no experience of international cricket has not just knocked the smile off Cummins' face, but he was smiling from ear to ear while wearing the Orange Cap on Wednesday night for being the highest scorer of this IPL season so far.

Balancing such consistency with a 200-plus high strike rate proved impossible even for Chris Gayle, the explosive West Indian widely hailed as the greatest T20 batter of all time, in any of his 13 IPL seasons during his glittering career.

No player had scored more than 600 runs in an IPL season at a 200-plus strike rate until Sooryavanshi emerged.

As Moody explained, the sport has never witnessed anything like this in the T20 format to be able to make sense of Sooryavanshi's freakish heroics.

The bat speed

While Bradman remains the game's greatest hero who played in a completely different era, his bat speed has remained the subject of wonder for many modern icons, including Sachin Tendulkar.

A few years ago, in a documentary on ABC Australia, the Indian maestro could not stop admiring the speed with which Bradman's bat made contact with the ball.

Remarkably, it's the same talent displayed by Sooryavanshi that struck Tendulkar on Wednesday night.

"Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's bat swing has been outstanding," Tendulkar wrote on X after Sooryavanshi's wondrous knock.

"What's even more remarkable is how beautifully he clears his front foot to create room for balls aimed at his legs. This freedom allows him to play the way he does. That innings was nothing short of spectacular!"

High praise from someone whose record as the youngest Indian at 16 to make his international debut will be under serious threat if the selectors pick Sooryavanshi in the national team for the Ireland and England T20 series next month.

Sunil Gavaskar, one of the greatest openers of all time in Test cricket, was taken aback by the purity of Sooryavanshi's stroke-play.

"Vaibhav is extraordinarily special because when you talk about the big six hitters, especially in T20 cricket, the image that comes to your mind is that of a slogger. But this boy is not a slogger," Gavaskar said on Sports Talk.

"This kid plays with a straight bat and hits those sixes over the long on and long off boundary. He hits technically perfect sixes. And if he gets a short-pitched ball, he gets inside the line of the ball and plays the hook and pull shots.

"These are clean, pure cricket shots. You rarely get to see such perfection when it comes to hitting sixes. I think this boy is God's gift to cricket."

More destructive than Richards?

Simon Hughes, a former England first-class cricketer who is now a leading sports writer in England, bowled to Tendulkar and the inimitable Viv Richards during his 204-match career with English county team Durham.

But on Wednesday, Hughes started a new episode on his YouTube channel, The Analyst, following Sooryavanshi's magical innings against Hyderabad.

“It defies description, actually, the way he plays,” Hughes said.“He has already played some extraordinary innings, but the way he destroyed any hope the Sunrisers bowlers had of stemming the flow was unbelievable.

“The great Pat Cummins was rendered almost innocuous - like a club bowler - by the way Sooryavanshi dealt with him. And Cummins was not bowling badly, he was bowling well.

“I bowled to Sachin Tendulkar when he was only 18 - he was phenomenal. I bowled to Viv Richards as well. Obviously, you are in awe when you bowl to players like that because you are not at the same level. But I have never seen destruction on quite this scale.”

It's impossible to predict how far Sooryavanshi can go. There will be tougher challenges when he goes abroad to tackle different pitch conditions in longer formats where bowlers have a more prominent role to play.

But when a boy leaves Cummins clueless, nudges Buttler to make AI jokes, compels Moody to make a Bradman comparison, and earns admiration from Tendulkar and Gavaskar, it's probably safe to say that cricket has discovered a generational talent.

It was only a few years ago that Sooryavanshi's father had to sell a plot of land to help him chase his cricket dreams. That boy is now delivering dream performances almost every night, with the greats of the game unable to comprehend what they are witnessing.