IPL Most Powerplay Runs: All-Time Records

The first six overs of an IPL innings are the only period when the fielding side must keep five men inside the circle, and for most of the competition's life batters treated that as an invitation to take singles rather than risks. Then the arithmetic shifted. In 2013 the competition scored at 6.93 runs an over in the powerplay. In 2026 it scored at 10.10. Nothing else in Twenty20 cricket has moved that far that fast.

Virat Kohli leads the all-time list with 3,477 runs in the phase, which is a function of nineteen seasons at the top of the order for one franchise. But the list splits neatly in two: the volume names, who opened for a decade, and the tempo names, who arrived after 2022 and struck at rates the volume names never attempted.

All figures below cover the first six overs of every innings in the 1,243 Indian Premier League matches played from April 2008 to the 2026 final. Overs seven to fifteen are covered on the middle-overs run records, and overs sixteen to twenty on the death-overs run records.

Most IPL runs in the powerplay

#	Player	PP runs	Inns	Balls	SR	Avg	Fours	Sixes
1	Virat Kohli	3,477	224	2,684	129.6	45.8	436	87
2	Shikhar Dhawan	3,415	214	2,780	122.8	35.9	455	76
3	David Warner	3,316	175	2,398	138.3	44.2	432	105
4	Ajinkya Rahane	2,759	182	2,240	123.2	34.5	350	75
5	Rohit Sharma	2,564	192	2,028	126.4	29.1	279	123
6	KL Rahul	2,424	135	1,883	128.7	56.4	267	93
7	Chris Gayle	2,373	135	1,761	134.8	37.1	264	143
8	Faf du Plessis	2,281	131	1,673	136.3	40.7	282	81
9	Gautam Gambhir	2,277	147	1,868	121.9	33.5	310	34
10	Shubman Gill	2,044	118	1,519	134.6	47.5	262	51
11	Robin Uthappa	2,035	149	1,636	124.4	32.8	261	50
12	Quinton de Kock	1,963	118	1,509	130.1	32.2	213	85
13	Parthiv Patel	1,904	130	1,565	121.7	26.1	283	31
14	Jos Buttler	1,854	106	1,306	142.0	42.1	229	82
15	Yashasvi Jaiswal	1,680	82	1,057	158.9	41.0	232	73
16	Sanju Samson	1,619	139	1,271	127.4	31.7	206	53
17	Virender Sehwag	1,593	103	1,105	144.2	26.1	230	46
18	Murali Vijay	1,574	102	1,375	114.5	32.1	176	46

Kohli's average of 45.8 in the phase is the highest of anyone in the top five, and his 436 powerplay fours are the most by anyone. His 87 sixes in the phase are fewer than Rohit Sharma's 123 from 656 fewer balls, which is the clearest single statement of how the two men opened.

Strike rate in the phase, min 600 powerplay balls

Volume rewards the long career. Rate identifies who actually attacked. The bar here is 600 balls faced in the first six overs — roughly two full seasons of opening — and it is stated because a rate list without one is meaningless.

#	Player	PP runs	Balls	SR	Sixes
1	Abhishek Sharma	1,387	807	171.9	76
2	Sunil Narine	1,174	690	170.1	72
3	Yashasvi Jaiswal	1,680	1,057	158.9	73
4	Prabhsimran Singh	1,152	753	153.0	52
5	Jonny Bairstow	944	625	151.0	39
6	Prithvi Shaw	1,347	919	146.6	37
7	Virender Sehwag	1,593	1,105	144.2	46
8	Jos Buttler	1,854	1,306	142.0	82
9	Suryakumar Yadav	1,017	721	141.1	35
10	Rahul Tripathi	1,013	726	139.5	37
11	B Sai Sudharsan	1,021	737	138.5	24
12	David Warner	3,316	2,398	138.3	105
13	Ishan Kishan	1,524	1,103	138.2	63
14	Faf du Plessis	2,281	1,673	136.3	81
15	Chris Gayle	2,373	1,761	134.8	143

Virender Sehwag is the name that dates the list. He struck at 144 in the powerplay in an era when the competition-wide phase rate was between 6.9 and 7.9 runs an over. Relative to his contemporaries he was doing something closer to what Abhishek Sharma does now than to what Gautam Gambhir, batting at the other end for Delhi Daredevils, was doing.

Gambhir is the counter-example worth keeping. He made 2,277 powerplay runs and hit 34 sixes doing it — one every 55 balls. Sehwag hit one every 24.

What Sunil Narine at the top actually did

Sunil Narine was a spinner who batted at nine when Kolkata Knight Riders first promoted him to open in 2017. He ended up with 1,174 powerplay runs at 170, and 72 sixes in the phase — one every 9.6 balls, better than any other qualified batter.

The logic was that the downside of losing him in the second over cost the side almost nothing, because he would have been batting at nine anyway. That reasoning is now standard: the run of top-order attackers on the strike-rate table above, none of whom debuted before 2017, are mostly picked on the same premise. It also explains why Narine appears high on the IPL most ducks list.

The phase run rate, season by season

Season	Powerplay runs per over	Balls per wicket
2008	7.70	23.6
2013	6.93	25.5
2017	8.33	23.3
2020	7.71	25.9
2022	7.82	24.2
2023	8.72	24.8
2024	9.47	22.5
2025	9.61	24.8
2026	10.10	22.4

The step change lands between 2022 and 2024. Two things happened. The Impact Player substitution arrived in 2023, which let sides bat a genuine hitter at seven and therefore lose openers more cheaply. And from 2025 the two-new-balls provision in the second innings changed what a chasing opener could expect from a soft ball at the death, pushing more of the risk forward into the first six overs.

Note that wicket frequency barely moved. The phase produced a wicket roughly every 24 balls in 2008 and every 22 in 2026. Sides are not getting out more often in the powerplay; they are scoring nearly a third more runs while getting out at about the same rate.

The 100-run powerplay

Six team innings have passed 100 inside six overs, and four of them came in 2024 or later. Sunrisers Hyderabad's 125 without loss against Delhi Capitals in April 2024 is the record, and it sits 25 runs clear of the best powerplay score from any season before 2017. The full list is on the page for the highest IPL powerplay scores.

Averages in the phase, and why they are worth reading

KL Rahul averages 56.4 in the powerplay, the highest of anyone with more than 1,500 balls faced in it. Shubman Gill averages 47.5, Kohli 45.8, Warner 44.2. Below them Rohit Sharma averages 29.1 and Parthiv Patel 26.1.

That spread is not really about quality. It is about whether a batter was expected to bat through the powerplay or to bat at it. Rohit hit 123 sixes in the phase — the most of anyone in the top ten — and got out roughly every 23 balls doing it. Rahul hit 93 and got out every 44. Both approaches produced sides that won titles.

Where the record is heading

Abhishek Sharma has 1,387 powerplay runs at 171.9 and is the leading candidate to change the shape of the top of this table, because he is doing at Sunrisers Hyderabad what nobody attempted before 2023: treating the first six overs as the primary scoring phase rather than the setup for one. Yashasvi Jaiswal, with 1,680 at 158.9, is on the same trajectory.

Whether either passes Kohli's 3,477 is a question of longevity rather than method. Kohli needed 224 innings. At their current rate, Abhishek Sharma would need roughly 120. The broader story of how the Indian Premier League arrived at this style of cricket, and its place in the domestic game, is covered in the guide to cricket in India.

Sources and method

Powerplay is defined here as overs one to six of an innings — the mandatory fielding restriction period in a full-length IPL match. Rain-reduced matches with a shortened powerplay are included as played, which affects a negligible number of balls in the totals above. Powerplay aggregates are derived from the Cricsheet delivery archive (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0), covering the IPL in full from 18 April 2008 to 31 May 2026.

Balls faced exclude wides and include no-balls, following the standard scoring convention. Strike rate is runs off the bat per 100 balls faced within the phase. Averages divide phase runs by dismissals that occurred within the phase, so a batter who survived the powerplay and was dismissed in the eleventh over counts as not out for these purposes; this is the only sensible way to average a phase, but it is not the same measurement as a career average and should not be compared with one. Innings counts any innings in which the batter faced at least one ball in the first six overs.

Season run rates are total runs conceded per over bowled across all innings in that phase, extras included. The 600-ball qualification on the strike-rate table is our own bar. Franchise names are given as they stood at the time.