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.