By Amlan Chakraborty
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Fourteen-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi is not the finished article yet and will need support to handle overnight stardom to achieve his full potential, his Rajasthan Royals coach Rahul Dravid said on Wednesday.
A cricket-mad India found a new batting sensation in Suryavanshi, who smashed 101 off 38 balls in Monday’s Indian Premier League match against Gujarat Titans.
His 35-ball hundred is the second-fastest century in IPL history and the youngest centurion in men’s T20 cricket has already been hailed as the new superstar of Indian cricket.
“He’s only going to develop and he’s only going to get better. Nobody is saying he’s a finished article,” former India captain Dravid told an online press conference.
“No one should be in a rush and proclaim him what he is not. He is what he is.
“He’s an exceptionally talented young player, who is working really hard on his skills and abilities, but he’s going to have to keep improving.”
Batting great Sachin Tendulkar led tributes to the phenomenal talent of Suryavanshi who smacked 11 sixes against Gujarat’s formidable bowling attack.
The usually stoic Dravid himself forgot about his leg injury and leapt from his wheelchair after Suryavanshi’s hundred.
After the sensational knock, it would be impossible to completely shield Suryavanshi from public attention but the teenager would have to find a way to cope with it with support from people close to him, Dravid said.
“Recognising that this can happen and putting a certain level of support to navigate all of this attention and still allowing him that space to be a youngster is going to be important.
“That’s part of being a cricketer in this country – how to handle this.
“It’s impossible to distance yourself a hundred percent but neither do you want to get sucked into it completely as well.
“So finding that happy medium is probably the answer in this situation.”
Having overseen the growth of several India cricketers during his time at the National cricket Academy and as India A coach, Dravid explained why he thought Suryavanshi was special.
“I think he’s got a really good hand and bat speed and obviously got a really high back-lift,” he said.
“He’s got good hand-eye coordination in terms of judgment of length. That’s something that’s really amazed me.
“He’s very quick to pick up on anything that is fractionally short or full, he’s really good to capitalise on that.”
(Reporting by Amlan Chakraborty in New Delhi; editing by Christian Radnedge)
