Several months back, Rahul Dravid felt the recently turned teenager (Vaibhav Suryavanshi) was too young to be playing even Under-19 cricket!
Maybe it was fast approaching his bedtime. Maybe someone had promised him a batch of fresh, hot jalebis that he apparently relishes so much (as Ravi Shastri helpfully informed us on air). Or maybe, he was just doing what you’d expect a 14-year-old to do – having fun.
Vaibhav Suryavanshi transformed a regular season of the Indian Premier League into an extraordinary spectacle on Monday night. At 14 years and 32 days, he became the youngest centurion in representative T20 cricket. Pause for a moment and let that sink in. 14 years and 32 days. His searing hundred, off 35 deliveries, is the fastest IPL ton by an Indian and the second fastest ever, only behind Chris Gayle and his 30-ball mayhem. Welcome to the world of serious cricket, Vaibhav Suryavanshi.
Quickly, what were you doing when you were 14? I remember what I was doing – watching Kapil Dev’s India lift the 60-over World Cup at Lord’s in 1983. Just watching gave one an exhilarating high. What must Vaibhav (let’s not call him Suryavanshi, not just yet) be going through?
His first ball in IPL cricket, from Shardul Thakur, was dispatched over wide long-off for six. That was on April 19, as he made his Rajasthan Royals debut against Lucknow Super Giants. A little over a week later, he smashed 11 sixes. Almost every one of them went exactly where he intended, the peach an extraordinary backfoot punch off Prasidh Krishna that screamed over the long-off fence. Gujarat Titans might have felt 209 for four was a winning today; inside half an hour, a baby-faced assassin exploded that myth, taking an all-international attack to the cleaners with a savage onslaught that took one’s breath away.
His partner during an opening salvo of 166 is himself a young man, but Yashasvi Jaiswal might have felt the weight of the world on his 23-year-old years as his 14-year-old mate lashed Mohammed Siraj and Ishant Sharma and Prasidh and Washington Sundar and Karim Janat and stand-in skipper Rashid Khan to all parts of the Sawai Man Singh Stadium. The loyalists of the Jaipur-based franchise, distraught after three successive games where their heroes snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, celebrated with gusto. In the dugout, the normally unflappable Rahul Dravid was twitching and smiling and then grinning and beaming. When Vaibhav hammered Rashid over mid-wicket for the last of those 11 sixes that took him to his hundred, Dravid forgot about his Achilles’ injury that has confined him to a wheelchair and crutches for nearly two months, throwing up his hands in delight and shouting ‘Yes, yes’ with an abandon that was both uncharacteristic and endearing.
That’s what young lads can do, you know. Vaibhav is a couple of years younger than Dravid’s younger son Anvay, so it is inevitable, even within a head coach-promising ward set-up, that the former Indian captain’s paternal instincts wouldn’t have surfaced. Dravid will surely feel the need more than ever before to continue to be Vaibhav’s life coach too, to ensure that he has his feet firmly on the ground and doesn’t get carried away after an innings of a lifetime.
And to think that, several months back, Dravid felt the recently turned teenager was too young to be playing even Under-19 cricket!
When Vaibhav Suryavanshi was not allowed to play vs Australia U19
Vaibhav caught the eye of junior national selection panel chairman VS Thilak Naidu, the former Karnataka wicketkeeper-batter, during a Vinoo Mankad Trophy Under-19 game in Chandigarh a year and a half back, when he was only 12. He looked 12 but batted with someone far more mature and physically stronger, belting the ball for fun against players much older than him. Naidu’s panel, with the blessings of VVS Laxman, the head honcho at the National Cricket Academy (now the Centre of Excellence), fast-tracked the youngster’s progress, and even though he missed out on selection for the Under-19 World Cup in South Africa in early 2024, continued to push him.
Vaibhav was kept away from the one-dayers against a visiting Australia Under-19 team last September so that he could work on his fielding but figured in the two subsequent ‘Test’ matches, marking his debut with a 62-ball 104 at Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium. Unfazed by pace and bounce, he peppered the Chepauk outfield with 14 fours (apart from smacking four sixes). By then, he had debuted for Bihar in all three formats at the senior level.
He had played just one T20 game for his state at the time of the mega IPL auction in Jeddah in November, but that didn’t stop the Royals from dishing out ₹1.1 crore, making the then 13-year-old the youngest to hold an IPL contract. Only the first of many ‘youngests’, evidently.
