India's handling of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi over the last few weeks has been puzzling, not because they picked him, but because they could not seem to decide why they had picked him in the first place.
On talent alone, there was little to debate. Two remarkable IPL seasons had made Sooryavanshi impossible to ignore. At just 15, he had already shown an ability to unsettle some of the world's best bowlers, forcing selectors into a conversation they would ordinarily have preferred to postpone. This was not a case of rewarding hype over substance. His performances demanded recognition, even if it meant overlooking more established names like Yashasvi Jaiswal, who had consistently delivered at both domestic and international levels.
By picking Sooryavanshi for the Ireland series, retaining him for England and then naming him again in the Asian Games squad, India appeared to make a statement that this was more than a reward for one excellent IPL. The selections suggested they viewed him as a long-term investment rather than a one-series experiment.
That is precisely why everything that followed has been difficult to understand.
India travelled to Ireland with a full-strength squad, meaning there was no obvious place for Sooryavanshi in the XI. Abhishek Sharma had established himself as arguably India's first-choice T20I opener, while Sanju Samson had followed up his starring role in India's T20 World Cup triumph with two IPL hundreds. Assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate's explanation that Sooryavanshi needed to bide his time, therefore, made sense in isolation. There was no glaring issue to correct.
But if the management had already decided Sooryavanshi would not feature in Ireland, wouldn't having him on the India A tour of Sri Lanka have been a more valuable opportunity? A teenager spending weeks playing red-ball cricket against quality spin would almost certainly have gained more than sitting through an entire T20I series without playing. If the objective was to expose him to high-quality cricket rather than rush him into an international debut, Sri Lanka seemed the more logical destination. Instead, he ended up doing neither.
His debut eventually came against England after the opening match was washed out, and Sanju Samson's scores of 5, 0 and 1 forced India into a change. Sooryavanshi's innings lasted only 10 balls, but it reminded everyone why he had been picked. The first-ball six off Jofra Archer was fearless, played with exactly the same freedom that had made him one of the stories of the IPL. India had not picked him because he had accumulated careful thirties or possessed a flawless technique. They had picked him because he could put international bowlers under pressure from the moment he walked in, changing the tempo of an innings in the space of a few deliveries.
Also Read: What makes Vaibhav Sooryavanshi a batting tornado?
That has increasingly become the nature of T20 cricket. Unlike Tests or even ODIs, where selectors often wait for players to iron out technical flaws, T20 rewards form and momentum. Teams back batters capable of taking games away in a handful of balls, accepting that the same aggressive approach will occasionally produce failures. It is the philosophy that underpinned India's two T20 World Cup triumphs, and presumably the thinking behind Sooryavanshi's selection. If that was indeed the case, India also had to accept that his high-risk approach would not produce immediate success every time.
England's seamers, led by Archer, quickly recognised that sustained pace directed into Sooryavanshi's body offered their best chance of success. Across his three innings, he faced 15 short or back-of-a-length deliveries, scoring 21 runs and hitting two sixes, but all three dismissals also came against that length. England had identified an area to target. The more important question was whether Sooryavanshi could respond once opponents had worked him out.
Instead of giving him another opportunity, India left him out for the final T20I. The decision became even harder to understand because the squad for the upcoming Zimbabwe tour had already been announced, with Sooryavanshi retained and Samson omitted.
If the left-hander was always going to be India's preferred opener for the next series, what exactly did India gain by dropping him for one game? With the series already lost, the final T20I seemed the ideal opportunity to let him work through the challenge England had presented. If, on the other hand, the management felt three innings had exposed enough shortcomings to warrant dropping him, recalling him immediately afterwards for Zimbabwe sends an entirely different message.
The same uncertainty surrounds Samson's handling. Reports suggested he had been rested for the Zimbabwe series, despite having no other format to prepare for. If rest was indeed the reason, bringing him back for a single T20I before leaving him out again achieved very little. If that was not the thinking, India's tactics only became more difficult to follow.
What makes the entire episode confusing is that the selectors never seemed fully committed to either approach. They did not treat Sooryavanshi like a youngster who needed to be eased into international cricket, because they picked him ahead of proven international performers and retained him across multiple squads and conditions. Nor did they fully treat him like a long-term investment. After just three innings, and immediately after England had identified an area to target, they interrupted his run instead of allowing him another opportunity to adapt. For a player still learning his game, that fourth innings may well have been more valuable than the first three.
India were right to pick Sooryavanshi. His IPL performances justified the call. The confusion lies in what they wanted from him afterwards. If he is viewed as a player for the future, he has to be allowed to learn in the middle, even if that means enduring the occasional failure. If three innings were enough to alter that thinking, then the selectors' original conviction was perhaps not as strong as it first appeared. Right now, it is difficult to know exactly what India wanted from Sooryavanshi's first international assignment because every decision appeared to send a different message.
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