Former India captain Krishnamachari Srikkanth has recommended the men’s team management and selectors to immediately ‘fast-track’ 14-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi into the national team.
Srikkanth, who has also led the BCCI selection panel, even compared Sooryavanshi’s rise to the legendary Sachin Tendulkar.
Tendulkar is the most successful prodigy in Indian cricket. There were a few stories of youngsters – like Ravi Shastri – who made their India debut aged under 20 and went on to do great things, but since then, it has been rare, especially in the batting department. The latest was Prithvi Shaw, whose career was completely derailed after an impressive start and is in a slow rebuilding phase now.
If he were to make an India debut now, Sooryavanshi would be by far the youngest to do it. For most countries, it would be beyond imagination, but the intrigue keeps rising with Sooryavanshi because of his record-breaking streak, with the most recent being an 84-ball 190 in the Vijay Hazare Trophy.
“Vaibhav is scoring centuries everywhere, be it the IPL, U19, anywhere,” Srikkanth said on his YouTube channel. “You can say it is against Arunachal Pradesh, but that is a different story. This boy has been hammering everybody across all kinds of matches. I had also told last year that they should fast-track him for the T20 World Cup. Maybe it is too late for that now, but they still fast-track him into the team. This boy has got tremendous potential. He should be fast-tracked and brought into the Indian team soon,” he added.
“People say let him play for some more time, let him do this, let him do that. Sachin also played at such a young age. Of course, he played for India after scoring hundreds at all levels, but the same thing can be done for this boy in white-ball cricket,” Srikkanth said.
On Friday, Sooryavanshi was awarded the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar by President Droupadi Murmu at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi.