The parents of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi created a practice field in their village in Bihar, which sparked the teenage cricket prodigy’s incredible rise. His younger brother is currently honing his talents on it.
After making history in the Indian Premier League last year at the age of just 14 with an incredible first season, Sooryavanshi was the buzz of the cricket world. The incredibly gifted left-handed batter, who turns 15 on Friday, hit a six on the first ball he encountered while playing for the Rajasthan Royals.
A few days later, the schoolboy hit a century off 35 balls, second fastest only to Chris Gayle’s feat off 30 balls in the T20 competition’s history.
“He is fearless. That is his nature,” Manish Ojha, one of Sooryavanshi’s first coaches, told AFP ahead of the new IPL season starting on Saturday.
Sooryavanshi’s spectacular debut in professional cricket was not a one-off one. In February, he helped India defeat England by 100 runs in the Under-19 ODI World Cup final in Harare by hitting 175 off just 80 balls, an innings that featured an incredible 30 boundaries.
After finishing with 439 runs at an average of 62.71 in seven innings, he was voted both player of the match and player of the tournament.
Since he picked up a bat for the first time at the age of five, the teenager’s growth has been rapid. In January 2024, at the age of 12, he made his domestic debut for his native state of Bihar in the Ranji Trophy. Later, he was chosen to play for India’s under-19 side against a visiting Australia team.
Sooryavanshi quickly reached the second-fastest century in youth Tests, behind England’s Moeen Ali in 2005, with a century off 58 balls.
Ojha commended Sooryavanshi for his ability to replicate what he had learnt in the nets, even the one his parents had assembled, in the heat of competition.
“What makes him special is the ability to execute plans on match days,” said Ojha.
Sooryavanshi’s meteoric rise to teenage superstardom has required a great deal of sacrifice from his middle-class parents. For years, his father traveled with him every other day from their Motipur rural home to Ojha’s cricket academy in Patna, the capital of Bihar. The trip took about two and a half hours each way.
“My small business failed because of my full-time focus on training Vaibhav,” Sanjeev Sooryavanshi told AFP.
For his mother, it meant rising earlier than everyone else.
“It was not easy to wake up at 3:00 am to cook for him so that he could take homemade food with him,” said Aarti Singh.
In 2024, 13-year-old Sooryavanshi became the youngest player ever to be sold in an IPL auction, proving that the sacrifices had paid off. He was acquired by the Rajasthan Royals for Rs 1.10 crore, which is more than 100 times the average yearly per capita income in Bihar.
Sooryavanshi, who was born on March 27, 2011, is the first IPL cricketer born after the competition’s inception in 2008. Before downplaying “personal goals,” Sooryavanshi jokingly stated that he intended to score “two-three thousand runs” in this year’s competition during a Rajasthan Royals media appearance earlier this month.
“The idea is to follow the process and help the team win,” stated Sooryavanshi, whose team has restricted his media responsibilities in order to keep him protected.
Back home in Motipur, father Sanjeev stated that the family is currently looking forward to Suryavanshi to don senior India colors.
“He has been playing extraordinary cricket so far. Cricket is Vaibhav’s life, dream and faith,” a proud Sanjeev told AFP, while he observed Ashirwad, his 11-year-old younger son, practicing on the same small pitch he had constructed next to their house.
