Opinion | At 14, Vaibhav Suryavanshi Might Just Be Too Good To Be 'Protected'

On April 2, 2011, when MS Dhoni hit Nuwan Kulasekara for the ODI World Cup-winning six at the Wankhede stadium, about 1,900 kilometres away, in Tajpur village of the Samastipur district of Bihar, a six-day-old infant lay blissfully unaware of the historic achievement of the Indian men's cricket team.

Fast forward just over 14 years, and that kid is being tagged a "generational talent". Some might feel it's a little too early to call him that, but Vaibhav Suryavanshi seems to be on a mission to silence any and all doubters. A batter's job is to simply score as many runs as possible, every single time he or she strides out to the middle. And Vaibhav, who will turn 15 in March next year, has been keeping the scorers and statisticians rather busy.

A look at just the last year he has had makes for rather surreal reading. In April, he became the youngest centurion in men's T20s (14 years and 32 days) when he hit a 35-ball 101 for RR vs GT in IPL 2025. In July, he hit the fastest recorded century in a youth One-Day international (a 78-ball 143 vs England in Worcester). In November, he smashed a 32-ball ton for India A vs the UAE in an Asia Cup Rising Stars T20 game, becoming the joint fifth fastest centurion in men's T20s (144 off 42 balls). And then, just under a year after his senior team debut for Bihar, he became the youngest to score a century in men's List A cricket (One-day cricket, including ODIs and domestic one day cricket) and also broke AB de Villiers' record for the fastest 150 in men's List A cricket (190 off 84 balls), in just his seventh List A match.

Keep The Balance

The million-dollar question now is, should Vaibhav be fast-tracked into the senior India set-up for T20i cricket? The one caveat here that must be mentioned is that the people in the corridors of power in Indian cricket have to be clear about the fact that while he potentially can be fast-tracked into white ball formats, his development in the red-ball format must not suffer at any cost. For T20i cricket, the wait ideally shouldn't be a long one. He has an average of 41.23 in the format with a strike rate of 204.37, and is not overawed by a 'star player' running in to bowl to him. But at the same time, they must give him time to play more First-Class cricket against quality opposition - something his team, Bihar, is not getting in the Ranji Trophy Plate Group - to ensure that his Test future is not put in jeopardy. 

That is going to be a tightrope walk. There has to be a proper plan in place in terms of allowing him to express himself fully in one format while continuing to improve in another. But it's difficult to do so, especially with Bihar cricket not in the best of shape. They were sidelined for 17 years after Jharkhand received statehood in November 2000, and their return to the Ranji Trophy Elite Group for the 2023-24 season made headlines for all the wrong reasons. 

A 'Special Case'

This is where the BCCI has to take the lead. The people in charge of the Centre of Excellence (formerly the National Cricket Academy) have to be directed to handle Vaibhav as a 'special case' and liaise with the selectors on a regular basis vis-à-vis his improvement. Remember, he is just 14, and for many experts, he should be allowed to develop his game and hone his natural skills some more before being pushed into the deep end. 

But then again, as far as white ball formats are concerned, this is a young man who faced the likes of Mohammed Siraj, Rashid Khan, Ishant Sharma, Prasidh Krishna and Washington Sundar to score a 38-ball 101 in the IPL and has an average of over 50 in youth ODIs. What if this southpaw is destined to be the next Yuvraj Singh? Would it not make more sense to expose him to the real rigours of senior cricket - one format at a time - and see how he copes with those challenges and pressures? If the experiment doesn't work, he can always go back to domestic cricket and raise his level before he is given another shot at senior international cricket. He is definitely not running out of time. Sure, India have a ton of top order T20i batting options, but given a shot, he might just overshadow some of the 'regulars'.

Maybe the national selectors can emulate the Rajasthan Royals' blueprint.

Learn From RR?

Kumar Sangakkara, the current Director of Cricket at Vaibhav's IPL franchise, the Rajasthan Royals, has predicted a "very, very special" future for the supremely talented teenager, whose power, timing and technique all impressed the former Sri Lankan captain. Maybe Sangakkara had a quiet laugh when he thought about how the stars had aligned for the teenager from Samastipur, who was just days old when Sangakkara had the best seat in the house to watch Team India chase down the target Sri Lanka had set for them in the 2011 ODI World Cup final, from behind the stumps. Sangakkara is the one who listened to a certain Rajasthan Royals analyst after the scouts had spotted Vaibhav in 2023. Videos of the then 11-year-old batting against the likes of Jofra Archer and other Royals' bowlers in the nets in Guwahati were enough for Sangakkara, the Director of Cricket for the Royals, to sign him.

Granted that Vaibhav still has a lot of work to do to fully justify the faith that Sangakkara and co. have shown in him, along with his Rs 1.1 crore signing figure, less than two months after his 58-ball century vs Australia Under-19 in a four-day game. But the signs sure are positive. No one in the RR camp is rueing the fact that they made Vaibhav the youngest IPL player of all time. In fact, if anything, it was a real coup to swoop in and sign this 'generational talent' before other franchises got wind of Vaibhav's talents.

The Deep End Is Calling

No such pressure for the men who call the shots for the senior India team selection. The squad for the 2026 T20 men's World Cup might have been finalised, but there will be no dearth of T20i series to "try out" Vaibhav in senior India colours, going ahead. And there's a golden opportunity coming up that can potentially be used as a catapult to help Vaibhav break into the senior India T20i set-up - the 2026 ICC U-19 World Cup (starts January 15, with India playing the US in the opening match in Bulawayo). The U-19 World Cup has traditionally been a preferred international 'launchpad'. Standout performances in the 'junior World Cup' have seen many an India great don the senior team jersey for the first time. The likes of Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Shubman Gill, etc., are prime examples. True that none of them were as young as 14, but times have significantly changed, and the format Vaibhav will be initiated into will be T20i cricket - something that has become synonymous with calls that rewrite the playbook. Trying to rejig Test cricket too much might backfire at some point (like Brendon McCullum and England have learnt the hard way in the ongoing Ashes series in Australia). But T20 cricket takes no offence. You can tweak and modify, adjust and revise, alter and reform, as much as you want. As long as the results are positive, no one will question the tactics.

Statistics and records, and what the future of a certain player might look like, make for great reading and tea-time banter. The people who run Indian cricket have to make calls that can make or break careers. And when it comes to a 14-year-old expected to be one of the standout performers of the upcoming U-19 World Cup, they need to be prepared to walk the tightrope when they vote for his future, as they ask themselves the question - 'Does he have what it takes to swim in the deep end?'

(The author is a former sports editor and primetime sports news anchor. He is currently a columnist, features writer and stage actor.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author