For 14 years, Chris Gayle’s 59 sixes in IPL 2012 sat in the record books the way certain numbers do: not just as a stat, but a statement of impossibility. No one came close. Gayle that season was operating at a frequency the format hadn’t seen before. 733 runs, a century, eight fifties, and a strike rate of 162 that made even the best batters look slow. He was the universe boss, and 2012 was his throne room. Chris Gayle for RCB in IPL 2012 and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi for Rajasthan Royals in IPL 2026. Then a 15-year-old from Bihar walked in and blew the door off. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s IPL 2026 season, 776 runs, 72 sixes, strike rate 238, did not just break Gayle’s record. It rewrote the ceiling. But the raw numbers hide something more interesting: these two seasons, played 14 years apart, represent fundamentally different philosophies of destruction. The Same Violence, Different Anatomy Start with what they share. Both men ended with one century, a cluster of scores in the 80s and 90s, and …