Sunrisers Hyderabad, charred by yet another Vaibhav Sooryavanshi special, saw their campaign go up in fumes on Wednesday (May 27), in the IPL Eliminator at New Chandigarh.

Level on points with the top two teams ahead of the Playoffs, and only marginally lower on the net run-rate, SRH were blown away by a Powerplay onslaught so severe that it set up the game. At the centre of the mayhem was Sooryavanshi's 29-ball 97, sealing its place as one of the great IPL knocks in a knockout clash.

For all the output he provides, Sooryavanshi doesn't seem to need much input from the RR management. "Just leave him alone, let him go and have fun," Riyan Parag told broadcasters after the game. Dhruv Jurel expanded on Sooryavanshi's mindset a bit more in the press conference.

"The best thing about Vaibhav that I have noticed is that he doesn't plan anything," Jurel said. "Because he practices a lot and he always backs himself. That's what he does every time he goes out and plays. The best thing about him is that he backs himself. He doesn't even have a shadow of doubt that 'I am not able to do it'".

As simple as it may sound, Sooryavanshi's one big motto is to not care about the bowler.

"When we go to an academy, (we're told) 'Don't watch the bowler, watch the ball," Jurel said. "As 17-year-olds, we always watch the bowler, (and think) he's a big name. But really, he just watches the ball. That's all.

"His mantra is 'I don't want give a damn about any bowler'."

SRH assistant coach James Franklin admitted that they threw whatever they could at the 15-year-old, but just could not contain him.

"There was a very, very small margin where you could bowl to him. I guess when you're playing on a really good pitch as well, it makes it particularly hard for bowlers to try and execute that tiny margin that you're looking for," Franklin said.

"I think you probably saw in the first couple of overs of the Powerplay that we were trying to bowl quite full, sort of inside leg stump, trying to get under his swing. But he started to work that out".

SRH even employed unusual fields, keeping very straight mid-off and cover at different points, but Sooryavanshi found ways to clear the ropes without breaking a sweat. Despite the shellacking, Franklin felt his bowlers did well to restrict RR in the closing stages, saying that RR looked set for 270-280 at one point.

When asked, Franklin insisted Sooryavanshi couldn't be compared to anyone else from the past.

"I don't think anyone's ever seen a talent like this," Franklin says. "It's freakish what he's doing at the moment. To think that he's potentially got 25 years left in the career is quite scary. He's only going to get better, he's only going to get stronger, he's only going to get more mature with how he bats.

When enquired if there was a consideration to bring in spin early to mix things up, Franklin said they didn't want to look past their strike bowlers in the Powerplay, first with Cummins and Eshan Malinga, and then with Sakib Hussain's pace changeups.

"Chucking a spinner at Sooryavanshi when he's going like that in the fourth or fifth over, that's a tough ask. We did what we could through the Powerplay," Franklin said, explaining why Shivang Kumar came in at his usual entry point.

Sooryavanshi is an extreme example of today's T20 batting, governed by young players, who, as Franklin says "don't have a lot of fear of the game" as they've grown up watching T20 on TV.

"When you're batting, they're trying to score boundaries as many as they can," Franklin said. "And I think when they're bowling as well, they're trying to bowl a lot of variations to create wicket-taking opportunities. So that's the way that the game's going and evolving.

"And it's evolved so much in the last five years, the pace of it. Particularly over here in India in the IPL, it's really a step above in terms of the pace of the game to most other T20 leagues."