‘Tendulkar of T20’: Why 15-year-old IPL star is no flash in the pan

You’re 15 years old, opening the batting in the middle of a heaving, floodlit stadium in the Indian Premier League.

At the top of the bowler’s mark is Pat Cummins, Australia’s formidable fast bowling spearhead and captain. At 32, he’s just over twice your age.

Are you thinking about survival, familiarisation, getting off strike? If you’re Vaibhav Suryavanshi, you’re thinking only of seeing the ball and swinging cleanly through it to clear the boundary. Cummins is still in his follow through as the ball sails into the stands at mid-wicket.

Cummins’ former captain and IPL commentator Aaron Finch is awed every time he sees Suryavanshi in action. ESPNcricinfo has called him the “Sachin Tendulkar of Twenty20”, and Finch cannot disagree.

“The thing that astounds me is his ability to strike the ball from ball one,” Finch told this masthead. “Even against the best bowlers in the world, he walks out, he’s got no fear, but he also has the ability to sum up game situations as well. As a 15-year-old that’s an incredible skill to have. He’s mature way beyond his years.”

Finch notes that Cummins wasn’t the first player to find their first ball to Suryavanshi sail over the boundary for six.

“Patty the other night, [Jasprit] Bumrah went for six first ball, first ball of his IPL career went for six. He’s got an unbelievable ability to just see it and hit it. He stands nice and still, which is the crucial part. A lot of guys move around the crease quite a bit, but he stands really still, and he’s got wonderful hands, so that adds up to a pretty good mix.

“I don’t know what you were doing at 15, but I certainly wasn’t contemplating thumping Kagiso Rabada and Bumrah and Cummins all around the park, it’s just an extraordinary level of skill he has.”

After making his IPL debut at 14 last year, Suryavanshi is proving this time around that he is no flash in the pan. Hailing from Bihar, the Indian state that also gave MS Dhoni to the cricket world, Suryavanshi was moulded for a cricket career from his earliest days, and made his Ranji Trophy debut at the age of 12.

Rajasthan Royals have provided him with some top-class mentors, from former coach Rahul Dravid to this year’s overseer Kumar Sangakkara, who offered some worldly-wise counsel after a first-ball duck earlier in the competition.

“Failure is a very strong word,” Sangakkara said. “My message to Vaibhav is, he’s got to enjoy everything. Whether it’s 100 off 35 balls, 50 off 15 balls or a first-ball duck; you’re allowed to score runs, you’re allowed to fail.

“For Vaibhav, I think the most important thing is to enjoy playing cricket. And he must never lose that freedom that he plays with.

“And he’ll figure things out as it goes along. So sometimes, for a batter like that, the less said, the better. I just want him to be this 15-year-old kid that goes out and bats. I’m very happy that Vaibhav’s with us.”

Finch noted how Suryavanshi’s amount of media exposure had been carefully modulated thus far. While he is living in an age far removed from the one where Tendulkar debuted for india at 16, he is also being allowed to concentrate on batting a little more than Sam Konstas was able to after his whirlwind Test debut in 2024.

“I haven’t seen him do too many interviews at games, either pre- or post-match, unless he’s won an award,” Finch said. “So I haven’t seen him exposed too much in that regard, and that’s a huge tick to the Royals for really managing him well and almost treating him like a kid up to a point.

“But the hype is real with him, he’s a seriously good player. You just have to look at the Under-19 World Cup and the final – even though he’s played IPL and there’s so much expectation, he walks out and gets 170 off 80 balls just doing it his own way.”

This week, the seasoned Indian writer and columnist Pradeep Magazine grappled with the seeming unreality of a 15-year-old dominating in the IPL and turning heads as Tendulkar once did.

“I doubt if he is fully aware of the emotional upheaval and expectations he has already aroused among followers and stakeholders of the game,” Magazine wrote in The Tribune. “Tendulkar’s entry to cricketing stardom was almost “muted” compared to the storm he has created even before playing for the country.

“We must remember he is still a possibility, one who could end up among the truly greats of the game. Tougher tests will come, as they do for everyone, when conditions turn difficult, bowlers more menacing and the whistling strike is not always a safe option. Only time will tell whether his defensive fortress is as sound as his aggressive instincts.”

Finch, though, pointed out that Suryavanshi is part of a generation who have grown up entirely in the T20 era, meaning they know the fearless approach to batting far better than the more survival-oriented viewpoint of older players.

“These kids walk in and say, ‘if I can hit two or three sixes, this could be my livelihood now’, and it goes to a different way of thinking,” he said. “It’s not about what’s best in terms of runs on the board, it’s all about impact.

“The conversations around teams have changed so much. You can get 30, but if it doesn’t benefit the team you’re pretty expendable because there’s a long list of players who could knock it around.

“Their upbringing now is having grown up watching T20, as opposed to evolving with it. I learned T20 on the go, I was 20 years old around the time T20 started, so you’re learning it as it’s evolving. Whereas now this is the one thing they know more about, so they just see the game differently.”

Muttiah Muralitharan is another former player, now coaching in the IPL, who has ruminated on how young batsmen in the tournament show scant respect for bowlers.

“You don’t think [someone with] the calibre of Bumrah comes and a young boy will hit a six [off him] because he will think about ‘how am I going to survive’,” Muralitharan said. “But nowadays, no, ‘how am I going to hit a six’ – that’s their approach.

“Confidence levels have gone up because people have showed this is the way to play the modern game and youngsters are following that.”

Debate is already hotting up around when Suryavanshi will graduate to the senior Indian team. Finch’s fellow commentator Ambati Rayudu has argued that an early entry into the senior Indian squad would make sense, if only to avoid the many “snakes” and fickle fortunes of the Indian state system.

While not in quite the same rush to see Suryavanshi travelling the world as an international cricketer, Finch has allowed himself to think of what it would be like to see the left-hander’s outrageous skills in a Test match.

“There’s a place in Test cricket for impact players like that,” he said. “You think of Rishabh Pant and the point of difference he has, he’s one player who can put real fear into an opposition because he’s unpredictable.

“We’ve seen what Vaibhav can do against the new ball in T20, if he batted at five in Test cricket against a 50-over old ball, what could he do there?”

The mind boggles.

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport are sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.