Ravi Shastri has urged India’s selectors to be bold and bring Vaibhav Sooryavanshi into the international setup as quickly as possible, saying the teenage opener should be in the conversation for the near future. Shastri said the door was “three-fourths open” for the youngster and argued that the T20 game is the best place to fast-track talent of his kind.
“I can tell you that, for sure, because if you want to encourage or get someone young and into the setup as quickly as possible, then it's the T20 format of the game and he is not short by any margin,” Shastri said on the latest episode of The ICC Review. “This guy can walk into a lot of sides in world cricket at this current moment in time. Just when you look at the exuberance of youth and that youth shows on his face.”
Sooryavanshi, a left-handed opener for Rajasthan Royals in the IPL, has been one of the season’s standout batters. He scored a 36-ball century against Sunrisers Hyderabad last month and has added two half-centuries this campaign, finishing with 440 runs from 11 innings at a strike rate of 236.56. He has also cleared the ropes 40 times, numbers that have turned his name into a serious selection discussion rather than a long-term projection.
The push comes after a year that has moved quickly for the teenager. At the start of the year, he played a starring role in India’s triumph at the ICC Men’s Under-19 Cricket World Cup, and on Thursday, 14 May, he received a maiden India A call-up. Shastri said he would be looking into Sooryavanshi straight away, adding that tours of Ireland in June could be the perfect moment to include him.
“A lot of people will ask, is he 15, is he 16, is he 14? I don't care. I just see the way he is batting at the moment and the way he's taking on all comers twice his age or maybe two and a half times his age. It doesn't matter to him,” Shastri said. “So I think he's very, very much in the reckoning. And when you have tours of Ireland and all this happening now, I would be looking into him straight away.”
The next step in Sooryavanshi’s rapid rise is already taking shape. He is set to travel to Sri Lanka in June for a tri-series that also involves Afghanistan, while the next ICC Men’s T20 World Cup is not due until 2028. That leaves selectors with a choice that Shastri wants made early: wait, or move now on a player whose form has already forced the discussion.
