Rajasthan Royals are wasting Vaibhav Sooryavanshi as an impact sub and the teenager knows it
For most of IPL 2026, the leading run-scorer belonged to a 15-year-old who, on paper, is not in Rajasthan Royals' best XI. That sentence should stop a team management meeting in its tracks. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has scored 200 runs in four appearances this season at an average of 50 and a strike rate north of 260, including a 26-ball 78 against the defending champions RCB that handed them their only loss of the season. He has done all of that as an impact player substitute, and he has only just been overtaken at the top of the run-scoring chart by Virat Kohli, Heinrich Klaasen and Ishan Kishan, all of whom have played more innings.
RR's logic is not nonsense. Donovan Ferreira spent the early weeks of the year recovering from a broken collarbone sustained in the SA20, and the Royals needed their overseas slots for Archer and others in the starting XI. That meant Sooryavanshi, who is still growing into the demands of T20 fielding, was the cleanest option to hold back. The impact-player role was treated as a way of using a kid's batting without exposing a kid's fielding for a full 20 overs.
A 15-year-old made of audacity
The problem with the logic is the player executing it. Sooryavanshi does not bat like a teenager being managed. He walked out at the Barsapara Stadium in Guwahati on April 10 and took 78 off 26 balls from an RCB attack that had swept aside everyone in sight, with eight fours, seven sixes and a half-century off 15 balls. He also has scores of 52, 31 and 39 in this campaign. Against SRH on April 13 he was the first man out, caught off Praful Hinge's first ball in IPL cricket, but even that bit of history ended a run in which opposing teams were openly afraid of him.
The case for putting him in the starting XI is not an emotional one. It is a performance one. Among openers in the last two IPL seasons with at least 400 runs, Sooryavanshi tops the list for strike rate and frequency of six-hitting. He is the only name striking at over 200. Teams do not leave that kind of producer on the bench for tactical reasons unless those reasons are very good. RR's are not quite good enough anymore.
And the player has noticed
Assistant coach Trevor Penney told the host broadcaster during the SRH match that Sooryavanshi "wasn't happy" about being left out of the XI. Not because he felt entitled, Penney was careful to add, but because he loves fielding and wants to be in the middle from the first ball. That is the kind of honesty you get out of a 15-year-old who has not yet learned to be diplomatic about being benched. Good for him. It also tells you something about a kid's relationship with his franchise when the assistant coach is on television defending why he is not in the team.
The flip side is worth stating. Sooryavanshi is 15. He needs minutes, yes, but also guardrails. A cooked schedule and a full-time fielding role in April heat is not obviously good for a developing body. The impact-player slot lets RR use his best asset, the batting, without asking too much of the rest.
Why the maths has changed
That trade-off made sense when Ferreira was still easing back. It made sense when RR were unbeaten and nothing obviously needed fixing. Neither of those things is now true. The Royals lost their first game of the season at Hyderabad, Ferreira is closer to full sharpness, and the gap between Sooryavanshi's output as a sub and any alternative RR could pick in the XI has become difficult to justify.
What would change if he started? The most obvious answer is that opposition new-ball bowlers would no longer know when he was arriving. Powerplay bowling plans for RR right now are essentially: "survive Jaiswal, hope Sooryavanshi hasn't been used yet." Put him in the XI alongside Jaiswal and the first six overs become a different kind of problem.
It is time
Rajasthan do not need to tear up their team. They need to recognise that the best strike rate in the league sits in their dugout, and the player delivering it is not a novelty. Sooryavanshi has earned a place in the starting XI, and keeping him on the bench risks two things. It blunts his best weapon, the element of surprise early in the chase. And, quietly, it tells a very young player that his output does not buy him a guaranteed spot.
Start him in the next RR fixture. Field him at third man or long-off where the angles are easier. Let him open properly. If it does not work, go back. But the decision to keep using him as an impact sub while he is outscoring most of the league on a per-innings basis is a luxury RR can no longer afford, and Sooryavanshi's quiet complaint is a reasonable one.
Cricket Updates
