Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Is Fifteen, and the Numbers Are Not Normal
1,221 runs from 29 innings in the IPL and in T20 internationals, at a strike rate above 220. Two of his innings are hundreds, and one took 37 balls.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was born in March 2011. He is fifteen years old, he has played a full Indian Premier League season and a T20 international series, and his record so far does not look like anybody else's.
The record
Across the Indian Premier League and T20 internationals, which is where he has played his senior T20 cricket, he has made 1,221 runs from 29 innings. He has faced 551 balls to make them.
That works out at an average of 42.1 and a strike rate of 221.6.
His highest score is 103, from 37 balls. The innings behind it is 101 from 38. Below those sit 97 from 29, 96 from 47 and 93 from 38.
What a strike rate of 220 means
It means he scores at more than two runs a ball across everything he has played, not in a single memorable innings. Elite T20 openers operate somewhere between 140 and 160. The most destructive finishers in the world reach the 180s over a career. Above 200, sustained across 29 innings, is not a category that normally has anyone in it.
The obvious caution is sample size. Twenty nine innings is not a career, and the bowling attacks that work him out have not all had their turn yet. Every young batter who scores quickly gets compared to someone, and most of them settle into something more ordinary by their fiftieth innings.
The less obvious thing the numbers show
He has been dismissed in every innings he has played. There are no not outs propping up that average, which is unusual for a player who scores this fast, because fast scorers in the lower middle order often finish matches unbeaten and inflate their averages doing it.
He is not doing that. He is opening, attacking from the first ball, and getting out. An average of 42 achieved entirely through dismissals is a different and more honest number than an average of 42 with six not outs in it.
What it does not tell you
Nothing here says he will be a great Test batter, or a great international batter at all. Strike rate at fifteen predicts very little about a career at twenty five. What it does say is that the shot making is real and repeatable rather than a single viral innings, and that the selectors keeping him in the squad through a T20I series are not doing it for the attention.
Our [batting forecasts](/predictions) carry his numbers for every match he is named in.