MULLANPUR, May 29: During his transition from a child prodigy to teenage sensation, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi must have hit a million balls in the nets, yet he is averse to even a day’s break as “life feels slow” to him when there is no practice.
The 15-year-old from Bihar’s Samastipur has been praised for his exceptional work ethic and a lot of credit goes to his father Sanjiv, who would drive him down to Patna five days a week from Samastipur for training.
“All this is because of my father. Since childhood, he has made me practise so much that if I do not practise even for a day, it feels like my life has slowed down a bit. So, I do not need to take a very long break; one day is enough,” Sooryavanshi told JioStar.
Such is his passion for training that he had also skipped his 10th standard board exams to focus on structured practice before IPL.
“I felt I should practise because the IPL was approaching and I was also coming back after playing one-day cricket (U-19 World Cup). There was a change in format too, so I needed to work on certain aspects of my game,” the teenager said.
The legendary Sunil Gavaskar recently said that he wants the child like innocence in Sooryavanshi to remain forever.
Talk to him about his idea of relaxation and the child in him takes over. He listed cartoons as his preferred mode of entertainment.
“When I used to stay at home two or three years ago and played matches or practised there, whenever I had free time at home, I used to watch cartoons, and I really enjoyed it,” he said.
“Even now, whenever I feel like I need some relaxation or peace, I watch cartoons. I sit comfortably in my room and watch whichever cartoons I like. It feels really nice and reminds me a lot of home.” With 680 runs and a record 65 sixes in this edition of IPL, Sooryavanshi is the biggest newsmaker in Indian cricket since the arrival of Sachin Tendulkar in 1988, a year before his Test debut.
While their batting styles might be different but just like Tendulkar, Sooryavanshi also oozes maturity beyond years.
His father Sanjiv has instilled the ethos of being a team player in him and that’s sacrosanct for him.
“Since childhood, my father has always told me that if you score a hundred, a double hundred, or even a triple hundred, but the team does not win because of it, then those runs hold no value. They may only for your personal record, but they do not benefit the team.
“So, if I score 80 instead of a hundred and my team wins, and if we still do not win despite me scoring a century, then that 80 means more to me than the hundredm” he said.
“The longer my team stays in the tournament and the deeper we go into the playoffs and finals, the more chances I will get to score hundreds and achieve whatever records I want to break. So, it benefits both me personally and the team as well,” he reasoned.
