Vaibhav Sooryavanshi: The workings of a mind unfazed

In the middle of the IPL season at one of Rajasthan Royals' training sessions, Vikram Rathour looked for batters to hit the nets and surprisingly found no takers. He needed someone to face up against Jofra Archer who was getting ready to bowl full-tilt, like he always does in training. But most batters were engulfed by hesitation and fear of injury leading into a matchday. In these situations at RR, only one hand often went up. "Every time Jofra wanted to bowl, I would look around the room and ask who will bat? And this kid will put his hand up saying I want to," Rathour tells Cricbuzz.

This was in 2025, when Vaibhav Sooryavanshi wasn't yet the kid who rewrote IPL batting rules. Before he became the 15-year-old star, making headlines and to raging topics of cricketing discourse - both on and offline, RR kept him neatly under wraps while being thoroughly impressed behind the scenes. It wasn't until a mid-season injury to Sanju Samson that paved the way for an IPL debut for Sooryavanshi, but RR loved every bit of his ability they saw long before that evening when he casually started with a first-ball six.

"I was there for the trials. That's the first time I saw him," Rathour recalls. "I was sold on his downswing. He has a great batswing. The way the bat comes down, I hadn't seen anything like that before. In the trials, there were pretty decent bowlers bowling. There were some throwdown guys throwing pretty fast. And this kid was comfortably hitting everybody out of the ground."

Once they put their money where their mouth was and outmuscled competition for his signature, RR's responsibility extended well beyond just creating the right environment for a precocious 14 year old stepping into a senior dressing room. More than anything else, the franchise and its support staff wanted to make sure his natural batswing was untouched.

"We just reassured him... told him again and again that he will not need to change anything [technically]. He always had this [batswing]. It is something natural. I don't think he was taught this. We just basically kept telling him that whatever happens, whatever he does with his batting, never to change this part of it because this is what gives him strength," Rathour reveals. "Because at times, people start meddling with their technique for no reason. So, he was basically given the message never to meddle with it."

In 2025, Sooryavanshi may not have had a matchday to look forward to early on but his itch to bat in the nets didn't waver even after he established himself in the backend of the season and emerged as the poster boy of 2026. As Rathour has seen through countless sessions with him, and many other India batters before in his capacity as a coach, Sooryavanshi was tough to peel away from the nets. And all of it came with a more layered purpose than just launching balls into the orbit.

"All the Indian batters I have worked with, they love to bat. And he is no different. He loves to bat, he loves to hit sixes. But he is smart as well. He knows what he is doing in the nets. He is not just going there and hitting," Rathour says.

Sooryavanshi finished the 2025 season with 252 runs at a strike rate of 206.55 in seven matches. RR had seen enough of his endless possibilities to first let him retain the opener's spot and push Sanju Samson to No.3 when he returned from injury, before eventually facilitating a high-profile trade that saw Samson move to CSK. But there was work to be done before Sooryavanshi could go into his second season in the IPL, where bowlers would come armed with microanalysis of what could deter the newbie.

"At the start of this year year, I had a discussion with him about the way he started last year. All of us knew that people are going to come back with better plans. So, we were looking at the areas where people might go. We could see from last year that people might go short to him. They might go fuller with the new ball. And they might go wider. Those three things were discussed and he was practicing them in the nets," Rathour says.

"I would put a wide offside field for him. Three fielders back. And just let him to find ways of dealing with somebody bowling those lines. So, the idea was that you shouldn't get surprised if somebody comes with a plan. When people went short to him, he was prepared for that."

Yet at one point in 2026, one of thesecame with the threat of poking holes in his technique. Sunrisers Hyderabad pacer Praful Hinge went short against Sooryavanshi and had him top-edging in the first over. To stoke the fire further, the SRH pacer claimed he had told his friends that he'd get Sooryavanshi out exactly like this. Less than two weeks later, when Sooryavanshi went up against SRH again, he batted like Hinge's post-game comment had irked him. The pacer went short and short of length in search of a result like before, but watched the ball fly for four sixes in the opening over. His 37-ball 103 that night was a knowing smirk at the creeping thought that his batting had now somehow lent itself to traps.

That second meeting against Hinge had revenge written all over it, but emotions didn't necessarily define his overall batting psyche.Sooryavanshi in fact, had enough awareness to learn on the go as bowlers began to go short on the off-side to see if he'd still drag it over and behind square leg.

"The good thing about him is that he is very smart. We saw him ducking against some bouncers. He started playing the uppercut suddenly. We started seeing him playing those cuts over point," Rathour says to his improvisation through the season. The numbers too showed any such bowling plans were being thwarted - he fell four times to short balls, but also smashed 180 off 58 such deliveries at a strike rate of 310.34.

"He is not a one-dimensional player," Rathour declares, before explaining what separates him from the conveyor belt of young openers emerging from the country's many state-run leagues. "He doesn't just play one way. Which can sometimes be the case with young kids. 'This is the way I play. This is how I have been successful. I am going to play only like this.' That is one thing that really again stands out with him. He is willing to adapt. Even with that, he is still scoring at a strike-rate of 200."

A lot of Sooryavanshi's success has come from two traits that have nothing to do with his batting abilities. With so much data analysis to dig into, every young batter walking into the league is equipped with the knowledge of what to expect from the bowlers they face. Training enables them to find a solution to the problems they pose, but Sooryavanshi, per Rathour, stood out even with his problem-solving.

"Cricket for me is a premeditated sport. If somebody bowls a bouncer, somebody bowls a yorker, what I am going to do? And every decent player will have one option ready - for example: 'If Bumrah bowls a yorker to me, I will do this.' A special player like Sooryavanshi has maybe four or five [shot] options ready. I think that is one of the biggest qualities he has. Not one option, but having multiple options and being able to react on time when that ball comes," Rathour says.

"I would ask him what do you think Bumrah will do against you? What are you expecting from Bumrah? And he'll have the answers. Because he's seen enough cricket and he understands that, okay, he might try a certain delivery against me," Rathour says.

In RR's third game this year, Sooryavanshi didn't need time to figure out what the champion bowler had in store for him. Bumrah became the first of many high-profile pacers that got hit for a six off the first ball they bowled to this supposed rookie batter.

"I wasn't worried about him handling Bumrah," Rathour says. "We had some throw-down guys bowling to him in Talegaon, in Nagpur, in the camps. Those guys, if you want them to, crank it up... they will bowl at more than 150 kmph. And this kid was hitting them all over the place."

Neither the stature of the bowler, nor the pace he was capable of bowling at made Sooryavanshi blink or make a conservative choice. In a chat with Sky Sports, Kumar Sangakkara talks of a chase against LSG where Sooryavanshi told his teammates before walking out to bat that he would hit 13 sixes and win it for them. He got close with 10 and RR made a mockery of LSG's 220/5. In what was his first-ever IPL playoffs fixture, against SRH, he was one hit away from breaking the record of the fastest IPL hundred held by Chris Gayle since 2013. Rathour had noted very early in his interactions with Sooryavanshi that there won't be an occasion in this league that could possibly weigh him down.

"Every time you speak to him, he sounds like somebody who knows what he's going to do and has things under control. 'You don't worry, sir, I'll do this'. 'Don't worry, I'll bring this or I'll chase this or we'll do this.' That's the kind of language that you keep hearing from him," Rathour says.

Sooryavanshi's international career, incidentally, began with a six off Archer before he became the youngest to score a maiden T20I fifty, against Zimbabwe. If his trajectory remains linear, the runs will keep coming, records will beckon and the inevitable comparisons with Sachin Tendulkar, already underway, will only grow louder. Rathour, who played some of his cricket alongside Tendulkar, sees it too.

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