The BCCI has taken the unusual, and some would say sensible, step of letting Vaibhav Sooryavanshi travel with his parents for India’s T20 trip to Ireland and England next month. The board will pay for the extra seats and hotel rooms. Officials hope the arrangement will soften the inevitable culture shock facing a 15-year-old suddenly sharing a dressing-room with established adults.
BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia explained the thinking. “You see, not all national teams at the senior level have a 14 or 15-year-old in their squad. After many decades, we have someone like Vaibhav Sooryavanshi,” he told PTI. “At one point in time, it was Sachin Tendulkar who made it to the national team at such a young age. When such a young kid is part of the senior team, there are obviously a lot of issues that can crop up. Therefore, to make him comfortable and help him get used to an adult environment, where all the other players are above 18 years of age, and the team management members are also adults, we felt it would be helpful… We are doing this because we believe it will ease a lot of issues as far as Vaibhav is concerned.”
Sooryavanshi earned the call-up on the back of an eye-catching IPL season: 776 runs at a strike-rate pushing 240, plus the Orange Cap, MVP and Emerging Player awards. Hardly surprising, then, that selectors decided to fast-track him. Yet raw numbers do not erase the practical worries that come with youth – homesickness, workload, the glare of senior media duties. Bringing mum and dad along feels a pragmatic compromise.
Right now the teenager is in Sri Lanka with India A, learning 50-over craft in a tri-series also featuring Afghanistan A and the hosts. His scores – 44, 38, 19 and 16 – look ordinary until you notice the tempo, 153.94, which keeps the scoreboard rattling even when wickets tumble. India A are already in Friday’s final at Dambulla, so the experiment can be marked down as broadly positive.
One flashpoint has clouded the tour. During the second match against Sri Lanka A, a heated exchange escalated into shoulder-to-shoulder contact between Sooryavanshi and an opposition seamer. Slow-motion clips buzzed around social media, many fans demanding an ICC intervention. Saikia poured cold water on that idea. “A lot of things are going on in the social media that BCCI is contemplating action, etc. Do you want BCCI to step into the domain of match referee?” he said. “The BCCI is not an authority, we should not intrude into the area where the match referee and the umpires are the main persons who can take any decision regarding any incident that had happened in the playground. Whatever had happened, it was a part of the game, and the BCCI have no role to play. The role is of the match referee. If anything is going wrong, he will take a call, the umpires will take a call, and there is a system in place.”
That frank answer should, in theory, close the topic. The tri-series is run by Sri Lanka Cricket, not the BCCI or ICC, so any disciplinary note will come from the local match referee.
Looking ahead, India’s senior squad assembles in Dublin in late June before crossing the Irish Sea for three T20s against England. All eyes, inevitably, will fall on the youngest tourist. Selectors insist he will be treated like any other batter; reality says curiosity is unavoidable. At least, with his parents nearby, Sooryavanshi will have a familiar pair of voices to lean on when the spotlight feels too bright.
