South Africa great Daryll Cullinan, who last week expressed concern about Vaibhav Sooryavanshi‘s well-being, has offered a fresh perspective on why thrusting the 15-year-old into the spotlight could do more harm than good. Sooryavanshi is at an age where he is not even eligible to vote or drive a car, yet the clamour for his inclusion in the Indian team continues to grow. The fact that he is already part of India’s T20I squad but has not played a game has placed the Indian team management, including captain Shreyas Iyer and head coach Gautam Gambhir, in a spot. The decision-makers insist Sooryavanshi must wait for his opportunity, but the patience of fans is wearing thin.
In such a scenario, where the hype around a benched Sooryavanshi has already eclipsed that surrounding players who are featuring in the XI, Cullinan makes a compelling point that underscores the innocence of a cricketer still only 15. At such a tender age, Sooryavanshi has his whole life ahead of him and, if all goes well, a career spanning at least 20 to 25 years, if not more. That is why, as Cullinan points out, protecting him is about more than just cricket. It is about safeguarding his overall development and nurturing.
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“What we are seeing in Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is not simply a talented boy playing above his age. It is something cricket has genuinely never had to deal with before – namely, a child placed at the centre of one of the most commercially powerful, globally visible and socially amplified sporting environments ever created: Indian cricket and the IPL. Cricket has seen prodigies. It has seen young players arrive early and carry labels they did not ask for. But it has not seen this precise combination before, of innocence, extraordinary gift, and a social media world that has abolished nearly every distance between a child and the opinions of hundreds of millions. Sooryavanshi is 15, living a life that is not proceeding at the ordinary pace of growing up. This needs careful consideration before it is too late,” Cullinan expressed while writing for Cricinfo.
“In my view he should be at home preparing for his exams, playing gully cricket with his mates, and being a young boy while he still has the chance. That does not mean ignoring his talent. It means understanding that the talent will only be truly served if the person carrying it is allowed to grow whole.”
Over the years, many young talents have impressed as they came through the ranks, but only a few have gone on to fulfil their potential, while many others have faded away. Look no further than Prithvi Shaw, whose career unravelled despite scoring a century on his Test debut. However, Sooryavanshi is unlike anything Indian cricket has seen before. The closest comparison is a 14-year-old Sachin Tendulkar, who was making waves as a teenage prodigy. Even so, with Sooryavanshi already at the centre of attention, he will undoubtedly face his own set of challenges, reckons Cullinan.
“Sooryavanshi’s door has closed very early. His identity has been decided for him by his own gift, the most involuntary thing a person can possess, before he has had much chance to explore alternatives. That is the quiet sadness beneath all the celebration,” Cullinan added.
“Greatness at 15 does not wait politely while the person catches up. It sets a frame. It fixes an image in the public mind. Everything that follows, the mistakes, the growing up, the confusion, the disappointment, the ordinary human work of becoming yourself, has to happen inside that frame. The boy becomes the legend before he has had the chance simply to become a man.”
Lastly, the former South Africa batter wished nothing but the best for Sooryavanshi, hoping he enjoys a long career and even surpasses Tendulkar as the Indian cricketer with the longest international career. But if things ever go wrong, or even before they do, Cullinan believes Sooryavanshi should speak to the Master Blaster, who experienced all this nearly three decades ago.
‘Sooryavanshi should speak to Tendulkar’
“What we should hope for is that he retires at 40 and not washed up at 25. That’s another 25 years of him! We should hope that his talent becomes something he inhabits on his own terms, rather than something that inhabits him. We should hope there are still parts of his life in which he can be ordinary and unobserved, in which he can fail quietly, laugh freely, finish his studies, play without a camera nearby, and digest all of what’s happening, in the quietness of his home and among his family and friends. The best chance of that happening is in the next three years. They should be about him, not cricket. Is that too much to ask?” he wrote.
“It is my sincere hope that he will turn to Tendulkar for guidance. He could not be more lucky than to have a mentor in a fellow Indian cricketer who has been through it all and seen it all, and who will have his best interests at heart.”
