Vaibhav, the sachin regen?

CHENNAI: For far long in this cricket-loving country, comparison has been the evil of the society, especially when that comparison has been made with Sachin Tendulkar -- one of the greatest that the sport has seen.

While Virat Kohli overcame that comparison and built his own identity, a 15-year-old from Samastipur in Bihar, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, finds himself in a similar situation. He’s the closest to Sachin, in terms of a talent surpassing all expectations at 15.

So, are the expectations and comparisons fair? DT Next sits down with Tamil Nadu legend, WV Raman, who has seen the young Tendulkar rise to the occasion, and currently is commentating about Sooryavanshi’s pyro-techniques.

You’ve obviously seen Sachin as a youngster, and now there’s a young Vaibhav Sooryavanshi on the loose, what do you make of his talent?

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s absolutely phenomenal in terms of ball-striking. But I think it’s absolutely unfair on both these guys to be compared because they belong to different generations, and are products of different environments.

What is common between them, however, is that they are the centre of all eyes. As it is, Sooryavanshi is making everybody sit and notice. He’s drawing a lot of people to the venues. He’s taken the world by storm with the way he’s played in the IPL and wherever else he’s played, including the U-19 side and his state team.

Two different eras, two different circumstances and two obviously totally different thought processes prevailing at the time they came into the scene.

What, in your opinion, sets Sooryavanshi apart from other talents?

The ability to go and just do it, you know, repeatedly. Because we can always use the cliches of he’s fearless, he’s this, he’s that. But the difference is that he’s taken on the best of bowlers, and the impressive thing about him is that no repetition seems to be overriding him.

He’s just doing what he knows he can do. That is going and playing shots and being aggressive and enjoying himself. To do that against the best and to do it as repeatedly as he’s doing is something special.

If you were to handle Sooryavanshi, what would you try and work with him?

If at all I was going to handle him, I would only try and hand hold him for next 6-12 months in terms of creating an atmosphere where he learns the nuances of the mental sides of the game. In terms of his batting, I won’t really discuss much with him because he’s a unique kind of player who likes to play his shots. And it’s going to be a case where he will learn the ropes as he goes along because there will come a time where people will find a way to try and stop him or succeed in stopping him.

Then he obviously will have to try and develop new skills to overcome whatever it is that causes him problems. Once he picks up the mental aspects of the game, then obviously he’s better off letting loose to play for two years the way he plays. And in those two years, he’ll go through a lot of situations, he’ll learn a lot of things and succeed.

What caught your eye the most about his game? Was it the high bat swing or the hand-eye coordination?

One thing that I would appreciate his coach is for not putting things into his head. It is so easy for coaches to kind of tell their wards, don’t do this, don’t do that. But it doesn’t look like his coach has done that to Sooryavanshi.

This boy has grown up in a different environment, different era, where everybody wants to just be aggressive, so that they get opportunities to play in the IPL, catch everybody’s attention. So, that is not a bad thing at all. What this talent of his will do to him, or how it will help him is that, once mentally and physically, he’s attuned to playing shots, he can always adjust his downswing, the speed of the bat to defend. He’ll definitely do it.

Do you feel that the youngster is at the perfect franchise, given Rajasthan Royals’ track record of unearthing talents?

There’s a lot of factors that need to align for the best of talent to be displayed and succeed. In this case, it’s happened as well as where he’s landed up.

Rajasthan Royals as his first franchise, where they have traditionally enabled a lot of youngsters to blossom, which is fantastic for the game and for the players, themselves as well, the way they’ve gone about since inception.

There’s no way that they’ll [RR] even think of letting him go anywhere. I think it’s more or less like a case of RR and Sooryavanshi being synonymous almost.

If India do fast-track him into the national setup, should fans be a little wary of expectations? Or do you feel he still has some time before donning the Indian jersey?

See, this is going to be a very, very tricky thing in the sense that not that it’s got nothing to do with ability. It’s got everything to do with the way things will be seen. I would personally take him in the [Indian] side, keep him for six months for him to learn the mental aspects.

He will learn to see how people handle successes as well as failure in the team. He also obviously would learn as to how the public reaction will be if he has a few bad games. Because when you’re playing for the country, the reactions will be different.

In a franchise setup, you are assured of playing more or less on a regular basis. In international cricket, it could be a situation where this boy could probably come across a situation where he might be given a break. I hope, like Sachin, he never faces such a situation during his career.

But in case it [failure] happens very soon, God forbid. When he first gets into the team at about 15 and half. How he will handle the psychological side of it when he’s losing a place and stuff like that. It’ll be a tricky business at times. So for that, I would suggest, I’m not being negative.

Let him get prepared in terms of handling the incidental things which are important in the current era. Just try and give him a feel of it. And then just say, ‘Okay Vaibhav, just get on with it. You’re going to play for next two years.’ Once he gets that confidence, once he learns the ropes subconsciously or consciously, I think it will help him a lot.

If this boy is allowed to see how all those dynamics operate, how that needs to be, how those things need to be handled, then I think you’re already trusting a very exciting, sensational kid. Allow him to have that experiential learning of the mental aspect, then say, okay boy, get on with it. Let’s have you playing for the next 15-20 years.