Cummins says SRH have a Plan B and Plan C for Sooryavanshi at Mullanpur
Pat Cummins has flagged Plan B and Plan C as the work SRH have been doing this week, and the player at the centre of it is a 15-year-old. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi took the Sunrisers for a 37-ball 103 in Jaipur in the league phase and walks into the IPL 2026 Eliminator at Mullanpur on Wednesday with 583 runs at a strike rate above 232 next to his name. SRH have planned for a single batter the way a coach plans for a top order.
Cummins spoke to JioStar in the build-up. "It's always a balance as a bowler, understanding what you do well and how you're going to bowl to your strengths. But when there are one or two players in every lineup who can take the game away, you do spend a little longer working on a Plan B or Plan C." It is not a panic statement. It is a captain admitting that the standard length and line will not be enough.
Why the homework piles up against this one batter
Sooryavanshi has hit 53 sixes in IPL 2026, the second-most by any batter in any T20 tournament in history. Forty-two of those have come off pace, the most for any batter in a single IPL season. His strike rate against quicks across the campaign sits at 238. Against good-length deliveries, the number he is supposed to respect, he is striking at 185 and has taken ten sixes off 63 such balls. The lengths that work against most teenagers do not work here.
The April fixture in Jaipur is the file SRH have been reading. Sooryavanshi's 103 came off 37 balls, and yet his side still lost. Dhruv Jurel's 51 from 35 helped RR post 228, and yet the target of 229 fell on a flat deck and Sunrisers got home with five wickets in hand. Cummins acknowledged that night straight. "Even though he got a hundred against us last time, I thought there were times we actually bowled quite well to him and kept him quiet. At other times, he got away. So we'll learn from that."
What changes at Mullanpur
The Mullanpur deck used for Wednesday's Eliminator is the same Pitch No. 4 that has seen three matches finish in the chasing side's favour this season, a high-scoring surface that should suit Sooryavanshi's powerplay strike rate of 231. SRH have to either get him in the first six overs or accept the middle overs will not slow him down. His strike rate climbs to 235 in that window.
Plan A is hard length on a sixth-stump line. Plan B against a young left-hander like Sooryavanshi is wide of off-stump, conceding the slap through point. Plan C, reading between Cummins's lines, is short and full in the same over to deny rhythm. None of the three are silver bullets. SRH have two wins over RR already this season to lean on, but both came before Sooryavanshi turned into the leading run-getter for his side.
Riyan Parag's RR are unbeaten at New Chandigarh in IPL 2026. The Eliminator's loser goes home; the winner gets Gujarat in Qualifier 2 on Friday. If Cummins's Plan B holds for the first six overs, Hyderabad will fancy themselves. If Sooryavanshi gets through the powerplay, the plans run out and the bowling captain ends up choosing between bad options.
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