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Life moves fast in the Indian Premier League, the richest and most popular cricket competition in the world. A fortnight ago Vaibhav Suryavanshi, 14, was a fringe player for the Rajasthan Royals and the youngest of a bunch of teenagers on the books of the league’s 10 teams. On 19 April he made his debut and hit his first ball for six, then, on 28 April, in an hour of incendiary batting, he scored a hundred off 35 balls, with 11 sixes disappearing to all corners. It was the second fastest-century in the history of the tournament and, by the time he went to bed that night, Suryavanshi was one the most famous people in India.
In the days since, Suryavanshi’s innings has been pored over by the league’s millions of fans, the clips watched and shared over and again on social media. His short life story has been retold endlessly on TV, radio, podcasts and in print. He has been praised by politicians, sportsmen and celebrities, and offered advice by everyone who is anyone in Indian cricket, including Sachin Tendulkar, who made his professional debut at the same age. Everyone who’s ever had anything to do with him, from his mother and father through to his junior coaches and his former teammates, has been sought out to share what they have to say.
In that time Suryavanshi has weathered his first scandal. An old video interview in which he stated he was 18 months older than his registered age went viral and was reported on around the world. Cricket being the sport it is, he has also endured his first IPL duck, when he was caught off his second ball in Rajasthan’s match against Mumbai Indians on Thursday. The roar of applause that greeted him when he arrived at the crease, and the stunned silence that fell around the ground in the moments after he was out, were another sign that his life has changed out of all recognition in two weeks.
“Let’s be realistic,” said Rajasthan’s coach Rahul Dravid earlier in the week. “He’s going to go through some ups and downs.” Dravid, who made his reputation as a coach by steering India to victory in the Under-19 World Cup, pleaded with the media to “please be realistic in how you write about not only his success but his potential failures”. After Suryavanshi’s duck, Dravid was duly confronted with a flood of stories about how he had apparently “failed to hide his own disappointment” after the teenager “crashed back to earth” by getting out for nought, a performance that launched a thousand memes.
Dravid ought to know better than to ask. When the IPL launched in 2008 the organisers made a point of encouraging actors and actresses to come in as investors to give it primetime celebrity appeal. Seventeen years later the tournament itself seems to have grown into India’s favourite soap and become one of the most successful domestic sports competitions in the world. According to the broadcaster JioStar, 525 million people watched last year’s tournament on TV and another 425 million on mobile devices. Wherever there’s a signal, there’s someone following the latest IPL goings-on.
Including in Bihar, the impoverished north-east province where Suryavanshi was born and raised, dreaming, all the while, of a career in the big leagues. His is a very modern Indian story. The outline is familiar. There have been plenty of young players in the league before who had similar tales of humble beginnings and hard sacrifices. His father was a club cricketer who had to sell off a patch of farmland to pay for his boy to attend the nearest cricket academy, 90 miles away in Patna. His mother woke at 3am every day to make him breakfast for the commute.
In Patna, Suryavanshi would train endlessly. He says he faced 450 balls a day and there were more in the little net his father built when he got back home again. Bihar used to be a bit of a cricket backwater, but the IPL teams have scouts everywhere now and they were monitoring his progress through the provincial ranks and the national Under-19 team, where he scored a century in a youth Test match against Australia. In 2024, still only 13, he earned his first contract when Rajasthan bought him for just over £100,000. The league is, as India’s beloved commentator Harsha Bhogle often says, the place “where talent meets opportunity”.
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Even now it’s unclear exactly how old Suryavanshi is. In the viral video he says he will be celebrating his 14th birthday on 27 September 2023. That would make him 16 now, although the game’s governing body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, insists that “bone tests” show he is not. It’s not unusual for there to be confusion about the exact age of players in his situation. Even now we don’t know the exact age of Hasan Raza, who became the youngest man to play Test cricket when he made his debut for Pakistan in 1996. And in truth his exact age doesn’t matter much, because what’s beyond doubt is that he is young, gifted and has the world at his feet.
