Indian cricket has a new six-hitting king. Vaibhav Suryavanshi shattered Chris Gayle’s long-standing record during the IPL 2026 Eliminator against Sunrisers Hyderabad in New Chandigarh, announcing himself as the most explosive young batter in the world.
Suryavanshi needed just seven sixes to break Gayle’s record and completed the feat in only 15 balls. Cricket fans tracking the most sixes in IPL by a player in a single season now have a fresh name sitting right at the very top.
Gayle had set his record with 59 sixes in IPL 2012, taking 456 balls to reach that tally. Suryavanshi surpassed it in just 266 balls, almost half the deliveries Gayle needed to achieve the same feat.
In the Eliminator, Suryavanshi blasted 97 off just 29 balls, smashing 12 sixes and five fours at a strike rate of 334.48. He missed his second IPL century of the season by only three runs, yet the innings left the entire stadium completely stunned.
His final season tally reached 65 sixes, the most by any batter in any T20 tournament ever played across the world. No batter from any country has ever come close to hitting this many sixes in a single T20 season before.
He also became the first ever batter to score 600-plus runs in a T20 season while striking above 200, ending with 680 runs from 15 innings at a strike rate of 242.85. These numbers go far beyond anything T20 cricket has ever witnessed.
Suryavanshi became the youngest player in IPL history to score 600 runs in a single season, breaking the record previously held by Rishabh Pant. At only 15 years old, he is dismantling records many believed would remain untouched for decades.
Chris Gayle was always the gold standard of T20 power hitting. But Vaibhav Suryavanshi has made one thing absolutely clear, a fearless new era has arrived and it belongs completely to him.
