The wait before the break

Rajasthan Royals’s teenaged batsman Vaibhav Sooryavanshi attacks a Punjab Kings bowler during the 2026 Indian Premier League game in Chandigarh on Tuesday. Pic/AFP

That Vaibhav Sooryavanshi will soon be picked in India's T20 squad is a no-brainer. When will he make his T20 International debut is to be seen. The question to be asked is: The 15-year-old left-hander to play in whose place? It's a fair question considering Sooryavanshi will have to replace someone in a World Cup-winning T20 line-up.

Build-ups to young players' debuts have always made for fascinating stories, providing rich fodder for historians just like in the case of Sachin Tendulkar, who was picked for India as a 16-year-old in 1989. In the video interview that late actor-cum-sports buff Tom Alter did with him in the 1988-89 season, Tendulkar indicated that he was up to the challenge of facing the West Indies quicks if picked for the tour of the Caribbean. But Raj Singh Dungarpur & Co decided to leave him out and I remember the then chief selector telling me many years later that he was worried about how the teenaged Tendulkar would cope without seeing his parents on a two-month tour, hence the decision.

Those who mattered had no doubts over his talent and ability. "I think Tendulkar must remain as the most potential player in our lifetime. I have never seen anyone play as well as him," Raj Singh was quoted as saying in Sportsworld magazine in March 1989.

Tendulkar was finally picked for the 1989-90 tour of Pakistan. When the selection committee was divided over Tendulkar's inclusion, senior selector Naren Tamhane's words sealed the deal at the selection meeting: "Sachin Tendulkar never fails."

Age is a big factor when it comes to selecting a young player. Even the Mumbai selectors were divided over whether they should pick Tendulkar in 1988-89. Milind Rege, the late Mumbai captain and selector revealed in Sportsweek magazine as to how Tendulkar made the cut as a 15-year-old: "In difficult conditions of the Kanga League [for CCI], Sachin played like a grown-up man. On a drying track, Sachin was right on top of the ball. Even the seniors in the team fell by way of class. We decided to straightaway include Sachin in the Bombay Ranji Trophy XI. Every member in the team was delighted with the way Sachin batted [in the nets]. In fact he was the only one to drive off the front foot to [Pradeep] Kasliwal, [Anirudh] Kher and [Anoop] Sabnis who worked no indecent pace as the Wankhede practice wickets are fairly nippy."

Back to Sooryavanshi. The other day, 2016 T20 World Cup winner-turned-pundit Carlos Brathwaite recommended that Sooryavanshi be introduced to international cricket like the West Indies did to Brian Lara, who incidentally is Sooryavanshi's idol. "If you look at how West Indies handled Brian Lara… he was a generational talent, everyone knew. So what did West Indies do? They put him in the mix with Viv Richards and what not, but he didn't play [international cricket].

That was a different time with loads of tour games, and he cut his teeth with the senior players without having made his debut. And then we know how his career went once he debuted," Brathwaite said on ESPNcricinfo's TimeOut show.

The West Indies selectors picked Lara in the Test squad for the third Test against India in the 1988-89 series at Trinidad. He was made 12th man and didn't get a look in that season. The following year, England came touring and Lara smashed 134 for the President's XI against them. That innings got him a recall to the West Indies squad. Again, he didn't make the XI in a side packed with stars. Lara was clearly losing patience. In Beating the Field, his 1995 autobiography, he wrote: "I was serving a long apprenticeship and it was becoming very frustrating." Lara, who finally made his debut in the third Test of the 1990-91 series at Lahore, opined that the West Indies selectors were "not inclined for making too many changes."

Even Garry Sobers, whose world record score of 365 was surpassed by Lara in 1993-94, was at the receiving end of some selectorial reluctance in 1953 despite his talent. Sobers made his first-class debut for Barbados in a tour game for the visiting Indian team. He had a match haul of seven wickets and in Garry Sobers - An Autobiography, he said that there was talk that he would be included in the Test squad to face the Indians in the fifth and final Test at Kingston. But the selectors opted for local man Alf Scott when spin ace Sonny Ramadhin was injured. Sobers reckoned they chose Scott because the Board didn't want to spend on his Barbados to Kingston air fare. Sobers eventually was capped the following year.

And while we wait with bated breath for opening batsman Sooryavanshi to wear that senior India cap, I'm moved to reproduce the lines in the 1970s British television sitcom, Are You Being Served? uttered by to-be-hired Mr Goldberg in praise of his future colleague and head of the men's department Mr Humphries: "So high up, so young...," to which Mr Humphries replies, "So far, so good."

mid-day's Deputy Editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello

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