Suryakumar Yadav, and an IPL season for the ages

There have been 12 occasions of a player topping 700 runs in an Indian Premier League (IPL) season. Ten players in total have done it, with Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle achieving it twice. Given the volume of runs, obviously each batter was scoring heavily throughout the season. But in that selected list, the man with the highest strike rate is Suryakumar Yadav. He has hit 717 runs in IPL 2025, and he’s done it at 167.9. That’s not all. He is also theonly middle-order batter to hit 700 runs in an IPL season. All the others opened the batting.

It makes sense too. If you need to have a blockbuster T20 season in terms of runs, you need to be at the top of the order, where you have the maximum opportunity to score runs. But Suryakumar doesn’t always do things that make sense to mere mortals. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be lap-scooping a fast bowler over fine leg, or breaking his wrists during a cover drive to angle it finer than geometry would allow.

The only way to have a humongous run-scoring season in the middle order is to score quicker than normal, and to never fail. It sounds impossible - until you look at Suryakumar’s IPL 2025 season. His lowest score across a 16-game season has been 26. This, despite batting at No.4 through most of the tournament. That his streak is a world-record for consecutive innings scoring 25-plus is well known now. But to do it from No.4 - occasionally No.3 - elevates it further.

Batters with 700-plus runs in single IPL season

Most of the batters who have amassed these run-heavy seasons have had a strike rate hovering in the 150s. That is not slow by any means, especially during the initial years of the IPL, but it seems to be the upper limit of the calibrated risk you can take and still score consistently.

It’s like the old physics laws we were taught at school: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to churn out big runs, minimise your risk-taking. If you minimise your risk-taking, your strike-rate will be affected. It makes perfect logical sense too. More than that, if you do it an elite level of execution - like all the 700-run club members did - it helps your team too. Each 700-run season has come for a team that qualified for the IPL playoffs.

And then along comes Suryakumar to turn physics on its head. He scored consistently. He scored heavily. He didn’t get the advantage of powerplay overs more often than not. And he still scored at breakneck speeds.

You should not be able to score 25-plus in sixteen consecutive games. You should not be able to score heavily without sacrificing strike rate. Or, if you are scoring fast, you should not be able to do it in a fashion where risk is still minimised. Suryakumar did all of that, and more.

The end of the fairytale

Suryakumar’s spectacular batting returns were the fulcrum of Mumbai Indians’ charge during the latter half of IPL 2025. What Jasprit Bumrah was doing with the bowling, Suryakumar was doing with the batting.

Bumrah was head, shoulders, waist and toes above anyone else in the bowling attack. He kept bringing Mumbai back from the dead in games that seemed to be drifting away. But even Bumrah needed the runs that Suryakumar invariably provided for Mumbai Indians to win.

With both of them firing, Mumbai seemed destined for a sixth title, even if the others were just chipping in around them. Because their champion batter and champion bowler were so good. It needed an innings for the ages from Shreyas Iyer to halt that dream.

But while Mumbai’s dream is over, don’t forget what Suryakumar Yadav did in IPL 2025. He defied the natural order of things - and won.

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