First Indian to 50 sixes in an IPL season: Sooryavanshi back on top of the Orange Cap race
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi spent Tuesday night reminding Lucknow Super Giants why letting a 15-year-old see anything short is a problem. His 93 off 38 balls, with ten sixes and seven fours, turned a chase of 221 into a seven-wicket win with five balls to spare at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium. By stumps he had also pushed Mitchell Marsh off the top of the IPL 2026 Orange Cap and added three Indian records to a season that was already running out of comparisons.
The Orange Cap leaderboard now reads Sooryavanshi at 579 runs in 13 matches with a strike rate of 236.32. Marsh, who made 96 in the same Jaipur game, slips to 563. Heinrich Klaasen sits third on 555 with Sai Sudharsan and Shubman Gill rounding out the top five.
The records he picked up between deliveries
Three milestones fell across one innings. He became the first Indian to clear 50 sixes in a single IPL season, with the tally now at 53. He is the youngest batter to push past 500 runs in an IPL campaign. And he got there in 227 balls, the fewest anyone has needed to reach 500 in a single edition of the tournament, beating a Glenn Maxwell mark that had stood for years.
What it means for the Orange Cap race
Lucknow still have a league outing left even if they cannot win the Cap back through Marsh, and Klaasen has playoff cricket to come with Sunrisers Hyderabad already through. So the gap of 16 runs to Marsh and 24 to Klaasen is not safe in any sane sense. What it is, though, is the kind of lead a player going at this strike rate is built to defend.
Rajasthan have a league fixture left themselves and, if the fourth-place perch they made survives the last week of the round robin, knockout cricket beyond it. The youngest-to-600 conversation is closer than it has any right to be.
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