69.21 per cent: how Indian batters have taken over IPL 2026
Add the column up across all the scorecards from this IPL so far and the number that comes out is 13,100. Of those, 9,066 have been scored by Indian batters. That is 69.21 per cent of all runs hit off the bat in the first 38 games of IPL 2026, and according to ESPNcricinfo it is the highest share Indian batters have ever recorded at this stage of an IPL season. The previous high water mark was last year, at 66.25 per cent. The 2022 edition, before that, was at 65.25 per cent. The trend has been pointing this way for a while, but this is a real jump.
Where the runs are coming from
Two things are true at once. The first is that India's senior international batters are scoring as well as they ever have in this competition. Virat Kohli has already gone past 9,000 IPL runs across his career and reclaimed the Orange Cap with an 81 against Gujarat Titans at the Chinnaswamy. Abhishek Sharma is at the front of the run-scoring charts. Sai Sudharsan, who started the season with 135 runs across his first six innings, hit a 57-ball century against RCB at the Chinnaswamy on April 24 and has been the in-form opener of the league since.
The second is that the uncapped Indian batter has stopped being a passenger and started being the engine. Uncapped Indians have put 2,757 runs on the board this season at a strike rate of 160.48. Both numbers are the highest ever recorded at this stage of an IPL season. The pace of the league is now being set by players who do not yet have an India shirt to their name.
The Sooryavanshi effect
The clearest example of that, by some distance, is Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. He turned 15 in March. He has already hit a 36-ball hundred against Sunrisers in Jaipur, the third-fastest century in IPL history, and added a 16-ball 43 at strike rate 268 to set up Rajasthan's chase at Mullanpur on April 28. He is in the top three of the Orange Cap standings. The point is not the records themselves but who is hitting them: a teenager who only became eligible for the IPL last season is doing the early-overs damage that used to belong to South African and West Indian openers.
The next layer down is just as striking. Aniket Verma at Sunrisers, picked up for thirty lakh at the 2025 mega auction, has hit a cameo in the 40s at a strike rate above 230. Naman Dhir is in Mumbai's XI ahead of multiple overseas players. Yashasvi Jaiswal opens for Rajasthan. Strike rates of 160 used to be associated with one or two specialist finishers; they are now the floor for an Indian batter who wants minutes in IPL 2026.
What is actually changing
The conditions are part of it. Wankhede has produced two scores above 220 in two games this season; Bengaluru, Mullanpur and Jaipur have all hosted 200-plus chases. The dew at most venues kicks in by the eighth over of the second innings and turns scoring into something close to net practice. None of that is new in 2026. What is new is the spread of Indian players inside teams' XIs who can take that environment and break it.
None of the conditions, on their own, would explain the share moving from 66.25 to 69.21 per cent in twelve months. What explains that is the depth of Indian batting talent now arriving at IPL teams ready to play. The 15-year-old who looked like a curiosity at the auction in November is now in the top three of the Orange Cap. The roles franchises used to fill with overseas signings, six-hitting middle orders, hard-handed openers, are now full of Indian names. The story of this IPL is not that the games have got faster. It is that the batters carrying that pace are wearing the home colours.
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