Playing Vaibhav Sooryavanshi before he deserves is the most absurd discussion that has, of late, consumed Indian cricket. Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri have been particularly critical of the team management’s decision not to play him in Ireland, where India lost both their T20Is. On Wednesday, Ravi Shastri, before the first T20I against England, reiterated the teenage star should be in the playing XI for the match before talking about the Ireland series and pointing out India’s mistake.
To begin with, Sooryavanshi can’t get into the playing XI just like that. He is competing with Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson for the opening slot. Now, just in case Sooryavanshi’s advocates have forgotten, less than four months ago, these two played a very big role in India’s T20 World Cup win. Samson, who has now failed in three straight games, including the one on Wednesday evening, scored 97 not out off 50 balls against the West Indies (a virtual quarterfinal), 89 off 42 balls against England (semi-finals) and 89 off 46 balls against New Zealand (final) in the last three matches for India. Can he be dropped because he didn’t score in three games? Would you really drop a World Cup Player-of-the-Tournament on the basis of three failures? Does that really make sense? Ask yourself.
Now, Abhishek Sharma scored a record fifty in the 2026 T20 World Cup final. His fifty came off 18 balls, the fastest in a knockout game. Abhishek got one fifty against Ireland, and in the first T20I against England, he picked up another. Even if he hadn’t done well in the past three matches, there would have been no grounds on which he could have been dropped.
It’s understandable that people are excited. Sooryavanshi has shown great promise. At an age where others are often self-indulgent, the Bihar superstar has become a big name in world cricket, without even representing the national team yet. A collective note of him has been taken at the global level. Greg Chappell, Michael Vaughan, Clive Lloyd, Gavaskar, Shastri and so many others have expressed their astonishment at the talent that Sooryavanshi possesses.
Yashasvi Jaiswal has a similar case!
But he has to wait his turn. It’s a national side that has its own processes to run the team. Excitement doesn’t govern it. Yashasvi Jaiswal’s is a case in point. He recently scored a century in ODIs (it was at home against a lesser team, Afghanistan and he needed some encouragement in regard to his ODI career), but he was still left out of the upcoming England ODIs, for there was no vacancy at the opening slot. Yes, Sooryavanshi was so good in the IPL and then in the 50-overs tri-series in Sri Lanka, where he scored the fastest fifty in List A cricket off just 11 balls, that he made himself indispensable. But there are still protocols to follow. At some point, Sooryavanshi is going to get a chance. He is all of 15 years. The conditions are going to be: one of the openers needs a rest, or one of them is so terribly out of form that the team management has no other option but to drop him and bring in the teenage star. Both conditions are not checked yet.
Another point… for all his talent, he is still a young boy who has not scored a first-class century yet, which simply means one thing: he is a work in progress. Surely, India are not looking at him just as a T20 player. To be truly respectable, one has to do well in Test cricket. He will get there in his own sweet time. Whether or not he plays soon, he is going to learn a lot just by being part of the senior team. It's a different atmosphere. The main target should be to make him the finished article, which will require a lot of time and patience.