Delhi: There are indications that the Indian Cricket Board is thinking of forming two teams together for the upcoming international cricket season. Obviously, this is a clear indication that there is so much cricket talent in the country that not everyone is getting a chance to form a team. What better indicator of the talent available than looking at the opener’s performance in the power play?
This time the storm has come in the name of Priyansh Arya, Abhishek Sharma and Vaibhav Suryavanshi. All three are amazing openers and it seems as if they themselves decide which team is dominant in the match? The amazing sight is that at present two of them are not even in Team India for T20 and giving place to Priyansh or Vaibhav Suryavanshi in the team means leaving out either Abhishek Sharma or Sanju Samson. IPL 2026 has proved that no one can compete with these three. The proof is in the strike rate in the power play and these three are at the top in strike rate in the power play this season:
Priyansh Arya – 257.63
Abhishek Sharma – 253.23
Vaibhav Suryavanshi – 249.43
Had 3 such openers been in any other country other than India, all three would have been playing international cricket by now, not Abhishek Sharma alone. The strokes appear as if playing cricket like golf. In T20 cricket, batsmen are now cleverly using footwork as well as bat swing to send the ball across the boundary and that is the secret of the better strike rate of these three.
If Abhishek Sharma’s style of hitting 6 shows a mixed style of Yuvraj Singh and Brian Lara, then Vaibhav Suryavanshi’s strength lies more in the speed of his bat than his movement, for which he uses free swing. Priyansh Arya’s technique is to swing the bat cleanly, allowing him to hit shots straight with the bat without taking huge steps and generally hitting 6s on the ‘on-side’.
That is why the counts of 4 and 6 of Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Priyansh Arya and Abhishek Sharma in the powerplay in IPL 2026 have spoiled the records of the bowlers of other teams. Check out their performance on some parameters:
Average count of runs scored per 6 balls: In every 6 balls, Priyansh has scored 4.21 runs, Abhishek has scored 4.5 and Vaibhav has scored the maximum 5.11 runs.
Batting average in power play: In this matter also Vaibhav is ahead of the other two. While Vaibhav Suryavanshi is scoring at an average of 108.5, Abhishek has recorded an average of 66.33 and Priyansh has recorded an average of 50.67.
On average, after how many balls a boundary: In this case also, Vaibhav Suryavanshi’s record in power play is better than Priyansh Arya and Abhishek Sharma. If Vaibhav Suryavanshi hit a boundary shot after every 2.175 balls on an average, then Priyansh hit a boundary shot every 2.26 balls and Abhishek after every 2.31 balls.
This kind of record gives a glimpse of batting like madness in the eyes of many experts and cricket pundits are surprised to see the hitting of these three. The day any of these three gets the right support, the team’s score reaching 300 will remain just a formality.
There is no answer to the increase in runs scored in the power play that has been seen since the 2024 season. Batsmen like Shikhar Dhawan used scoring runs in the power play as a weapon, but all three of them destroyed the other team’s attack with the power play batting. Now this dominance of these three remains a question for the selectors of India also.
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