SRH Star Reveals How Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Spoiled Their Plans: 'Where Do We Bowl?'

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH)’s middle-order batter Liam Livingstone has revealed the assortment of plans that his team tried against Rajasthan Royals (RR) opener Vaibhav Sooryavanshi through the course of IPL 2026 and how the 15-year-old had an answer to almost everything. At one point during the playoffs, Livingstone said, the team dugout was lost for answers to him, thinking, ‘Where do we bowl?’

SRH and RR played three matches against each other in IPL 2026. Sooryavanshi got out for a duck to a short ball from Praful Hinge in the first group stage encounter. In the next match, he smashed 103 off 37 balls, easily neutralising the bouncers.

“He just… the way he hits a ball, he hits it so clean,” Livingstone said on the Stick To Cricket podcast. Never

really misses the whole time. First time we got him out with a bouncer – first ball, he hit it straight up. But the development he made from the start of that tournament to the end – we were bowling bouncers, and he was hitting it over third man. Then you’d bowl this side (on the shoulder), he’d hit it there (on deep fine). Bowl full, he’d hit it there (down the ground). Bowl a low full toss, he’d flick it over there. And you’re like – well, hold on, where do we bowl?”

For the Eliminator in Chandigarh, Pat Cummins and Co. went completely defense-first, trying to restrict him with yorkers from the first over, but the left-hander made the margins too small for it to work. Again, he ended up scoring 97 runs.

“People don’t really bowl wide because there are only two men out (in the power play). It’s a brave option. We actually tried it – for the first time in the entire tournament, we went away from our blueprint. We had three men behind the bowler, who tried to bowl yorkers in the first six, but every time we missed, it went 20 rows back,” Livingstone recalled.

As it happened, the Gujarat Titans went to the extremities of the short-ball plan in the second Qualifier and the teenager still managed to score 96.