Vaibhav Sooryavanshi didn’t have the noticeable backlift or the super-sonic bat speed that have now caused a whole bowling business to experience ongoing nightmares when he participated in the Rajasthan Royals trials.
However, Sooryavanshi frequently reminds Zubin Bharucha of a young Sachin Tendulkar, who possessed similar qualities when he was fifteen, due to his exceptional cricket intelligence and lucidity.
Bharucha, who also worked with Sooryavanshi and is perhaps one of the top hitting mentors in the nation today, provided an up-close look at the science of his batting and what makes him unique.
“One of Vaibhav’s rare qualities is his ability to grow alongside the game. What people see today is not what existed when he was eight years old. This exaggerated backlift, for example, evolved progressively as the quality and pace of bowling improved around him,” PTI quoted Bharucha as saying.
Before the 2025 Indian Premier League began, Bharucha, who was then affiliated with the Royals, actually talked about how the trainers worked on his bat speed.
“Interestingly, at the trial he attended, he did not even possess the fastest bat speed amongst the group. This was identified and worked on diligently for a period of three months where we were able to improve it by another thirty percent,” the former Mumbai batter recalled.
What, therefore, sets Sooryavanshi apart from other gifted young batters emerging from the ranks?
“That ability to delay commitment, to almost suspend time for a fraction longer, is one of the defining traits of elite batting,” Bharucha pointed out.
Sooryavanshi has very little footwork; instead, he has primarily stood and delivered with incredible bat speed and a tremendous backlift. However, he can use the depth of the crease thanks to a small backfoot trigger.
“A lot of that comes from his loading onto the backfoot and his back-lift. The back-lift is not merely a stylistic feature; it acts almost like a self-propagating depth-perception mechanism. As the ball travels, the body, hands, and eyes work together to create spatial awareness.
“Great batters do not just react to the ball, they seem to receive extra information from it. That is incredibly difficult to teach because it sits at the intersection of vision, timing, balance, and instinct.”
Despite being significantly younger than the team’s more experienced players, such as Dhruv Jurel and Riyan Parag, his training regimen hasn’t differed from theirs.
“There is no radically different magic formula. The process is built around deconstruction and reconstruction — breaking the batting down into smaller components, identifying inefficiencies, and then rebuilding movements and decisions in a more repeatable way. The core objective is always risk reduction through fault reduction, while simultaneously enhancing scoring options,” Bharucha said.
Sooryavanshi’s batting has shown an increase in scoring opportunities. His on-side shoots dominated his scoring chart in 2025, but this year he has also developed off-side shots.
“At the highest level, batting development is as much about adding range as it is about removing weaknesses and increasing clarity under pressure. What is interesting is that his practice routines between IPL seasons have not dramatically changed. He has been hitting roughly the same volume of balls for the last couple of years.”
“With elite sport, people often search for some secret technical breakthrough, but more often than not the biggest shift is belief,” Bharucha said, relating from his decades of coaching young talent, who come up through the system.
What distinguishes Sooryavanshi of 2025 from Sooryavanshi of 2026, then?
“The difference now is that his confidence has multiplied. Earlier, he knew he could dominate U-19 bowlers. Now he believes the same methods, the same tempo, and the same instincts can work against international bowlers as well. That internal shift is enormous. Talent gives players a ceiling, but belief is often what allows them to actually reach it,” Bharucha answered.
Sooryavanshi is experiencing a high, but like with other players, there will undoubtedly be bad points. Bharucha believes he hasn’t seen a teenager with such clarity since Tendulkar, even though the noise surrounding him will grow enormously.
“In that sense, he reminds me very much of a young Sachin Tendulkar. Not necessarily stylistically, but in terms of maturity and clarity. Some players arrive young in age but already old in understanding. He is one such,” said Bharucha.
“It would be unrealistic to suggest that he will somehow be immune to the struggles every cricketer experiences. Failure, scrutiny, and the weight of expectation are unavoidable parts of any sporting career, particularly in India but what stands out, though, are some of the qualities he possesses beyond pure skill.
“His leadership instincts and his cricket intelligence are unusually advanced for someone so young. He processes situations quickly and has a natural awareness of the game around him.”
Bharucha won’t mind if selectors put him in the deep end of the pool, despite some doubts about his performance in red ball cricket.
“So if the belief is that he has the capability, then there is also an argument that throwing him into the deep end may actually accelerate his learning. Great players often adapt quicker against the highest standard because their learning curve sharpens under pressure.”
