None of that could have mattered less to Kishan on May 18, a boy from Jharkhand, representing Hyderabad and antagonising fans from Chennai. The 27-year-old wicketkeeper couldn’t even be bothered by the fact that at the other end of the same ground, the greatest Jharkhandi to ever play the game, the injured MS Dhoni, who had led CSK to a record-five IPL titles in the past and couldn’t recover in time to take the field this season at the age of 44, was perhaps waving his final goodbye to his beloved supporters in yellow. Best represented by that one moment of Kishan fury, the emotional grammar had now become franchise-first. The IPL was no longer merely a tournament within Indian cricket. For millions of fans, it had become the main event itself. As it was once designed to be, given that it was largely based on club football rivalries in Europe.
None of this means Indian fans care less about the national team, of course. But over 19 seasons, the IPL has built a world of its own—with its own loyalties, rivalries and mythology. Fans now celebrate (and by the same measure, dislike as well) franchises with an intensity once reserved mainly for international cricket, while players move between cities and teams with the ease of global club sport. The IPL is no longer just part of Indian cricket’s calendar. It increasingly feels like the centre of it.
AT THE VERY HEART of this new centre lies the very future of the sport, 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi—quite easily the greatest teenage prodigy to play top-flight cricket after Sachin Tendulkar. Playing in his second season when boys his age are busy writing their Class 10 Boards, the Rajasthan Royals’ discovery sits on top of the run-getters’ list with 579 runs in 13 completed innings, with one group match to go.
If his century on IPL debut last year—the second-fastest in the history of the league, no less, and scored at the tender age of 14—shocked the watching world, Sooryavanshi’s heroics in the opening game of the 2026 season—a 15-ball fifty against CSK, the second-fastest by any Indian—was seen as a reminder that the kid from Samastipur, Bihar, was the real deal, a superstar in the making, a successor to Virat Kohli. Two matches later, Sooryavanshi faced Jasprit Bumrah for the first time and off the very first ball, Bumrah was smacked for a six. The second IPL hundred arrived at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium against SRH, followed by a 38-ball 93 in the penultimate match, where each of his 10 sixes put Rajasthan Royals within touching distance of the playoffs.
