IPL Highest Powerplay Scores: All-Time Records
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in the Indian Premier League8 min read
Sunrisers Hyderabad were 125 without loss after six overs against Delhi Capitals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 20 April 2024. Travis Head had made 84 from 26 balls and Abhishek Sharma 40 from ten. No side in the Indian Premier League has scored more in the powerplay, and only one has passed 116. Sunrisers went on to 266 for 7 and won by 67 runs.
The next best is 116 without loss, by Punjab Kings against Delhi Capitals at the same ground on 25 April 2026 — Prabhsimran Singh 71 from 22 and Priyansh Arya 38 from fourteen. Punjab were chasing 265 and got there with six wickets and an over to spare.
Only six powerplays in the competition's history have reached 100. The competition average across 2,435 completed powerplays is 48.4, so a hundred is roughly double the going rate for the phase, and the ranked list below runs down to 87.
The twenty-five highest powerplay scores
| # | Powerplay | Innings total | Team | Opponent | City | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 125/0 | 266/7 | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Delhi Capitals | Delhi | 20 Apr 2024 |
| 2 | 116/0 | 265/4 | Punjab Kings | Delhi Capitals | Delhi | 25 Apr 2026 |
| 3 | 107/0 | 167/0 | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Lucknow Super Giants | Hyderabad | 8 May 2024 |
| 4 | 105/0 | 159/4 | Kolkata Knight Riders | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Bangalore | 7 May 2017 |
| 5 | 105/0 | 219/6 | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Punjab Kings | New Chandigarh | 11 Apr 2026 |
| 6 | 100/2 | 202/7 | Chennai Super Kings | Kings XI Punjab | Mumbai | 30 May 2014 |
| 7 | 97/1 | 202/4 | Rajasthan Royals | Royal Challengers Bengaluru | Guwahati | 10 Apr 2026 |
| 8 | 97/1 | 208/5 | Chennai Super Kings | Lucknow Super Giants | Chennai | 10 May 2026 |
| 9 | 94/1 | 286/6 | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Rajasthan Royals | Hyderabad | 23 Mar 2025 |
| 10 | 93/0 | 223/4 | Punjab Kings | Sunrisers Hyderabad | New Chandigarh | 11 Apr 2026 |
| 11 | 93/1 | 262/2 | Punjab Kings | Kolkata Knight Riders | Kolkata | 26 Apr 2024 |
| 12 | 92/0 | 257/4 | Delhi Capitals | Mumbai Indians | Delhi | 27 Apr 2024 |
| 13 | 92/0 | 249/4 | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Mumbai Indians | Mumbai | 29 Apr 2026 |
| 14 | 92/1 | 152/6 | Royal Challengers Bengaluru | Gujarat Titans | Bengaluru | 4 May 2024 |
| 15 | 91/1 | 203/8 | Lucknow Super Giants | Chennai Super Kings | Chennai | 10 May 2026 |
| 16 | 90/0 | 189/4 | Chennai Super Kings | Mumbai Indians | Mumbai | 17 Apr 2015 |
| 17 | 90/1 | 234/7 | Kolkata Knight Riders | Lucknow Super Giants | Kolkata | 8 Apr 2025 |
| 18 | 90/1 | 228/5 | Lucknow Super Giants | Mumbai Indians | Mumbai | 4 May 2026 |
| 19 | 89/1 | 245/6 | Punjab Kings | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Hyderabad | 12 Apr 2025 |
| 20 | 89/1 | 209/7 | Rajasthan Royals | Punjab Kings | Jaipur | 18 May 2025 |
| 21 | 89/1 | 229/5 | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Rajasthan Royals | Jaipur | 25 Apr 2026 |
| 22 | 88/1 | 272/7 | Kolkata Knight Riders | Delhi Capitals | Visakhapatnam | 3 Apr 2024 |
| 23 | 88/2 | 199/10 | Delhi Capitals | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Delhi | 20 Apr 2024 |
| 24 | 87/0 | 212/2 | Rajasthan Royals | Gujarat Titans | Jaipur | 28 Apr 2025 |
| 25 | 87/2 | 98/2 | Kochi Tuskers Kerala | Rajasthan Royals | Indore | 15 May 2011 |
Entry 25 is the anomaly of the list and worth stating plainly: Kochi Tuskers Kerala reached 87 for 2 in six overs at Indore in May 2011 chasing a target of 98, so their innings ended at 98 for 2 in 7.2 overs. The powerplay was the match.
The phase has changed twice
| Season | Average powerplay score |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 46.1 |
| 2011 | 43.1 |
| 2013 | 41.3 |
| 2017 | 50.0 |
| 2019 | 48.5 |
| 2021 | 46.3 |
| 2023 | 52.2 |
| 2024 | 56.8 |
| 2025 | 57.9 |
| 2026 | 60.5 |
The powerplay was at its most conservative in 2013, averaging 41.3 — under seven an over with fielding restrictions and two new balls. There was a first rise around 2017 and 2018, when the average settled near fifty and stayed there for five seasons. Then a second and much larger one from 2023.
Sixty runs an average powerplay in 2026 is a rate of ten an over across every innings in a season. Fifteen years earlier the same phase averaged seven. The IPL most powerplay runs page covers the individual careers that this shift has rewritten, and the IPL most powerplay wickets page the bowling side of it.
Why the second rise happened when it did
Three of the four highest powerplays came in 2024 or 2026, and the 2023 rule change is the obvious candidate. The impact player lets a side name an extra batter after the toss, so a specialist can be added to the order without weakening the attack. The effect on the first six overs is direct: an opener who knows there is one more batter than usual behind him has less reason to survive the new ball.
But the rule cannot explain all of it, because the 2017 rise happened without it. What changed then was the arrival of a generation of openers selected specifically for powerplay strike rate rather than for occupying the crease — a role that barely existed in 2011.
The two rises together mean the phase is now scored differently at every level of the game. A side that reaches 60 in six overs in 2026 is exactly average; the same score in 2013 would have been the seventh-best powerplay of that entire season.
The Sunrisers method
Sunrisers Hyderabad have the highest career powerplay average in the competition at 50.7 from 208 innings, and they hold the record, the third-best score and four of the top thirteen. All of those came between April 2024 and April 2026, with Head and Abhishek Sharma opening.
| Club | Career powerplay average | Innings |
|---|---|---|
| Sunrisers Hyderabad | 50.7 | 208 |
| Punjab Kings | 49.2 | 270 |
| Rajasthan Royals | 48.6 | 247 |
| Kolkata Knight Riders | 48.2 | 268 |
| Delhi Capitals | 48.1 | 276 |
| Mumbai Indians | 47.6 | 287 |
| Royal Challengers Bengaluru | 47.5 | 275 |
| Chennai Super Kings | 47.3 | 262 |
The spread across eight clubs is 3.4 runs, which is smaller than the gap between two consecutive recent seasons. Club identity matters far less to powerplay scoring than era does, and the Sunrisers figure is carried almost entirely by the last three campaigns rather than by eighteen years of method. The Sunrisers Hyderabad hub covers the club, and the 2024 season page the campaign in which the record was set.
What a big powerplay is worth
The relationship between the powerplay and the final total is real but looser than the ranked list suggests. Of the twenty-five entries, the final totals range from 98 to 286.
Two entries stand out for what did not follow. Kolkata reached 105 without loss at the Chinnaswamy in May 2017 and finished on 159 for 4 — a collapse in scoring rate of over six an over across the remaining fourteen. Royal Challengers Bengaluru were 92 for 1 against Gujarat Titans at their own ground in May 2024 and finished on 152 for 6.
Both cases had the same cause. A powerplay that large is usually built on a surface where the ball comes on, and both innings ran into spin from the seventh over. It is the standard rebuttal to reading a scoreboard at the six-over mark, and the reason the IPL highest team totals list and this one share only a handful of entries.
Four things the tables do not show:
- Ten of the twenty-five powerplays cost no wicket at all, and a further twelve cost one; only three cost two.
- Six powerplays have reached 100 and four of them came in 2024 or later; the other two are from 2014 and 2017.
- Delhi and Mumbai host four of the twenty-five apiece, and the two highest were both made at the Arun Jaitley Stadium against Delhi Capitals.
- Head's 84 from 26 balls inside the record powerplay is the second-highest individual score made within the first six overs of an IPL innings; Suresh Raina made 87 in the powerplay of Chennai's 100 for 2 at the Wankhede in Qualifier 2 of the 2014 season.
The chases these starts produce are on the IPL highest successful chases page, the strike rates behind them on the IPL best batting strike rate page, and the Indian Premier League index lists every season. The cricket in India hub places the competition in the domestic calendar.
Sources and method
Powerplay scores were computed ball by ball from the Cricsheet ball-by-ball archive (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0), covering all 1,243 IPL matches from 18 April 2008 to 31 May 2026, using the mandatory powerplay overs each match file records rather than a fixed assumption of the first six.
Only innings in which the full powerplay was bowled are included, which is 2,435 of the archive's team innings. An innings curtailed by rain inside the first six overs, or a chase that finished before the sixth over was complete, is excluded from both the ranked list and the averages, because a partial powerplay score is not comparable with a full one. Reduced-overs matches with a shortened powerplay are excluded on the same basis.
The score is every run scored in those overs, including wides, no-balls, byes and leg-byes, and the wicket figure counts all dismissals including run-outs. Season averages divide the total powerplay runs by the number of qualifying innings, so they are unaffected by the differing number of matches per season. Club averages merge Delhi Daredevils into Delhi Capitals, Kings XI Punjab into Punjab Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore into Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and are shown only for clubs with at least a hundred qualifying innings. All figures close with the 2026 final.