Vaibhav Sooryavanshi goes to pull it, hoiks it high to deep midwicket, is out for 44 off 37 balls. Almost immediately, a portion of the 12,000 fans who have risen at dawn to queue outside the Chepauk Stadium for free tickets begin to vacate their seats. The Duleep Trophy final in Chennai between East Zone and South Zone is scheduled for five days and has been going for barely an hour.
But for some, the show is already over. Of course, Sooryavanshi is part of the reason the final is taking place in Chennai in the first place. It was originally slated for the national academy on the outskirts of Bengaluru, only to be moved in order to accommodate the thousands of fans desperate to glimpse the child prince of Indian cricket in the flesh.
Sooryavanshi is the hottest player in the world right now, a 15-year-old left-handed jaw-dropping genius with records spilling out of his pockets. But when it comes to red-ball cricket, the classic form of the game, he’s still – by any objective measure – not very good. Going into this final, Sooryavanshi’s first-class average is a shade above 23, rendering him statistically a less effective red-ball batter than Craig Overton.
Here, in perfect batting conditions, he scores a brisk and brash 44 in a mammoth total of 708, before dancing down the pitch and getting stumped for eight in the second innings as East Zone chase the outright win. None of which really tells us anything conclusive. The numbers are largely subservient to the project, the hypothetical, the burning question with implications not just for Sooryavanshi, not just for India, but very possibly for cricket itself.
At the moment, and for all the hype and heroics for Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League, Sooryavanshi is nowhere near the India Test side. Only last week he was named in the Twenty20 squad to face Afghanistan, rather than the India A side who will play Australia in a multi-format series this month, which is where you logically would put a prodigious young batter whom you were grooming for Test cricket. All of which raises a fascinating paradox.
Given his skillset, his upbringing, his 7.6m Instagram followers, the basic sense of declinism in many parts of the sport, could Sooryavanshi be the first player in history who needs Test cricket less than it needs him? Because, let’s face it, the kid is going to be a superstar whatever he chooses. This year he obliterated the record for the number of sixes in an IPL season.
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