Master opening batsman Sunil Gavaskar was famed for his timing on the field. And his column in the latest issue of a sports magazine could not have appeared at a more opportune time, even as the sporting world is going ga-ga over Bihar’s teenage wonder boy Vaibhav Suryavanshi and his amazing century in the IPL.
Gavaskar was severely critical of one-match wonders in the IPL getting massive publicity in the IPL, while those cricketers slog the entire season to excel in India’s premier domestic tournament, the National Championship for the Ranji Trophy goes largely unnoticed.
Gavaskar is spot on when he castigates the media for beating a path to the family homes of IPL performers to trot out ‘human interest’ stories while the feat of Harsh Dubey of Ranji Trophy champions Vidarbha, who created a new record with 69 wickets in the 2024-25 season, went largely unsung. The same fate befell unheralded Kerala’s remarkable path to their maiden Ranji Trophy final.
No doubt Suryavanshi’s feat is a tremendous one even if the headlines about the ‘14-year-old’ are somewhat misleading, going by his own statement in an interview in 2023 that he was to turn 14 in September that year. That clip has now gone viral. He first caught the eye last October with a blistering century for India Under-19 vs Australia Under-19 in the three-day international match at Chennai.
To put things in perspective, another teen sensation back in the late 1980s scored a century on his first-class (red-ball) debut in the Ranji Trophy in 1988 as a 15-year-old and barely a year later was peeling off boundaries against a stellar bowling line-up of Imran Khan, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram and Abdul Qadir in his maiden Test series in Pakistan. That Boy Wonder was none other than Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, and mind you, those were proper adult-size boundaries, not the schoolboy stuff of the IPL, where sixes rain down like confetti at a wedding.
While fanboys on social media are making strident calls for Suryavanshi to be chosen for the Test series in England in a couple of months’ time, it should be noted that his first-class average currently stands at 10 in the handful of red-ball matches (five in all) he has played so far. So, he has yet to prove himself in cricket’s most exacting format.
While there is no doubt that he is a rare talent, all the hoopla surrounding his record century for Rajasthan Royals against Gujarat Titans, it is hoped, does not distract him from the path forward to the greatest honour for any sportsperson—donning national colours, which could come soon. In that regard, he is indeed fortunate to have Rahul Dravid as the coach for his IPL franchise, someone who is ideally placed to help him keep a level head.
