Sudharsan 638, Gill 616, Kohli 542: the Orange Cap race walks into the IPL 2026 playoffs
Sai Sudharsan walked off the Narendra Modi Stadium on Thursday night with 84 off 53 balls, an 89-run win for Gujarat Titans, and the IPL 2026 Orange Cap back on his head. The 24-year-old GT opener now sits on 638 runs in 14 matches, 22 clear of his captain Shubman Gill on 616, and 59 ahead of Rajasthan's Vaibhav Sooryavanshi on 579.
A GT one-two with the league stage in the books
Sudharsan's knock against Chennai Super Kings lifted his strike rate for the season to 157.92. He has one century and seven fifties. Gill, who hit 64 off 37 in the same innings at 172.97, climbed to second on the table with six fifties of his own.
The two openers have spent most of IPL 2026 trading the top spot. Sooryavanshi held it briefly after his 93 off 38 against Lucknow on Tuesday, only to lose it again to Sudharsan on Thursday. Going into the playoffs, the gap between the Orange Cap holder and the man chasing him is the smaller of the two top-end gaps in this competition.
Behind the GT pair
Sooryavanshi anchors the chase pack on 579. Mitchell Marsh has 563 runs for Lucknow Super Giants, whose season is done. Heinrich Klaasen sits on 555 for SRH. Virat Kohli is the next RCB man on the list with 542 in 13 innings, one century and four fifties to his name, and one league fixture left to play in Hyderabad on Friday night.
Marsh has run out of innings. Sooryavanshi and Klaasen still have at least one each, in the playoffs or in their final league outing. Kohli has the most runway of anyone in the top six because RCB are on course for a top-two finish and could play as many as three knockout matches.
Why the cap is not yet decided
The Orange Cap rewards the highest run-scorer across the full tournament, league plus playoffs. GT's league campaign closes on 14 matches; Sudharsan and Gill add to their tallies only in the knockouts, and a top-two side plays a minimum of two matches in that phase. A Qualifier 1 win takes them straight to the final. A loss sends them to Qualifier 2 and, if they win that, the final.
That gives Sudharsan and Gill two or three innings to extend their lead. It gives Kohli at least two and possibly three to close 96 runs, plus one final league match before the brackets start. A century in any of those innings closes the gap in one go.
The IPL 2026 playoffs begin in Dharamsala on Tuesday with Qualifier 1. The Orange Cap is decided in Ahmedabad on May 31. Sudharsan holds the lead, Gill has the more recent fifty-streak, and Kohli is the only one of the three with a league innings still to bat. Whoever pulls clear by the final at Narendra Modi Stadium walks away with it.
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