The world is eagerly waiting for Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the 15-year-old sensation, to make his international debut for Team India. The left-hander might achieve the feat on Friday in the first T20I of the two-match series against Ireland. The youngster deserves a chance, given his recent performances and the way he took down the likes of Jasprit Bumrah and Pat Cummins in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 season. Ahead of the first T20I between India and Ireland, former India wicketkeeper-batter Dinesh Karthik backed Sooryavanshi to set international cricket alight.
Sooryavanshi had recently smashed the fastest List-A fifty as well, off just 11 balls, and this further increased the clamour for the left-handed batter to be included in the playing XI for the first T20I against Ireland.
Karthik said that even if the youngster doesn’t make his debut in the series opener against Ireland, he will get his chance sooner rather than later, as Sooryavanshi is also a part of the squad for the five T20Is against England and the Asian Games.
“You know what makes sports so beautiful? Stories. And there’s a wonderful story developing in the form of a young boy called Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. The whole cricketing world is actually speaking about whether he will make his debut very, very soon. Is it going to be in Ireland? I’m right now in England. He’s there across the border. Is he going to be making his debut in that series? Or is he going to be making it in England? But the point is, he has to make it at some point in time because he’s literally set the world alight with his style of play,” Karthik said on Instagram.
“For a young boy taking on the best bowlers in the world, he’s shown no fear whatsoever. And come the big game, he seems to actually ramp it up a notch, which is an extremely tough skill to have. If you do go through the realms of this sport over a period of time, there are not many who have created such an impact at such a tender age,” he added.
‘Phenomenal’
When Sooryavanshi was named in the India squad for the series against Ireland and England, chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar said that the youngster’s performance in the IPL 2026 made it really hard to ignore, and the left-handed batter basically “picked” himself.
Karthik said that Sooryavanshi’s story truly warms everyone’s hearts, and he backed the lad from Samastipur, Bihar, to show his skills at the biggest stage of international cricket as well.
“Now we’re almost asking, in international cricket, how tough will it be for him? Well, we’re never going to know the answers for all of that. But boy, he has actually been phenomenal in the little time that he has played. There is no one who is more spoken about without playing international cricket as much as Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has actually been spoken about across the length and breadth of the cricketing world because they just don’t understand how a young boy can do so much and so unabashedly take on some of the greatest names this sport has seen,” said Karthik.
“We will wait and see how good he’s been, but I have no doubt that he’s going to set the international cricketing world alight as well, no doubt,” he added.
Speaking of Sooryavanshi, he had smashed 776 runs in the IPL 2026 season at a strike rate of 237.31 and he won multiple awards, including Orange Cap, Super Striker and Most Valuable Player.
