Suryavanshi: Remember the name
new delhi: It takes immense courage at the age of 14 to take on seasoned professionals and unleash a batting carnage that leaves the world in awe. It takes a great amount of humility and maturity to keep it together after such a performance as it begets a cascading of praise and limelight.
It seems Rajasthan Royals’ Vaibhav Suryavanshi, younger than the IPL, is living the dream of every teenager following his Monday heroics against Gujarat Titans which rippled across the cricketing fraternity.
Hailing from Bihar’s Tajpur village in Samastipur, Suryavanshi, up against the likes of Mohammed Siraj, Ishant Sharma, Washington Sundar, hardly showed nerves as he piled on so many records that even some important ones needed shoehorning.
Consider this: He is the youngest to smash an IPL hundred and his 35-ball century was also the second-fastest of the league. He became only the ninth uncapped batter to score a century in the IPL. At 14 years, 32 days (as of Monday), he is the youngest man to score a century in T20 cricket. A staggering 94 of his runs came in boundaries in what was only his third game in the high-stakes tournament.
The list goes on.
His record-shattering performance may have surprised all but not his childhood coach Manish Ojha
“We have coached him, he’s a natural. A clear thought-process, how to approach the game – it’s all in him. He has been a very aggressive player since the beginning too. He likes to play shots,” said Manish Ojha
Even RR batting coach Vikram Rathour echoed similar views. “We have been watching it in (the) nets the last few months. So we knew what he was capable of and what kind of shots he can play,” Rathour said.
Tough beginnings
However, the road to being “the Indian cricket’s next big thing” hasn’t been easy.
His family had to sell off their farmland to fuel their son’s dream. His mother, keeping in mind his training schedule, would wake up before dawn after sleeping late.
He and his father, Sanjiv, travelled around 90 km daily to Patna for training due to lack of facilities back home.
“I am what I am because of my parents. My mother, for the sake of my practice schedule, wakes up at 3 in the morning after going to sleep at 11, sleeping barely three hours. “My father left his work to support me. My elder brother is taking care of his work and the household is running with great difficulty. But papa is backing me,” he said.
And so, Suryavanshi rose through the ranks in Bihar. He was just 12 years and 284
days old when he made his First-Class debut for Bihar in the 2023-24 Ranji Trophy season.
At that time, nobody would have pictured the scenes which unfolded Monday. Itseems he’s just getting started. Next up for him is the Team India dream. A distant one though? Not for a guy who is smashing big names all over the park.
He is destined to go places.
“I want to contribute to India and I have to work hard for that. I cannot stop working hard till I achieve that level. I will try to do well for the country,” he said.
