‘He has to be one of those guys…’ - Former India cricketer advises BCCI to be patient with Vaibhav Suryavanshi

The teenage talent Vaibhav Suryavanshi attracted headlines for his sensational performances in the recently concluded IPL 2025. The batting prodigy played for the Rajasthan Royals in seven games of their campaign and ended up as one of the leading run-scorers for his side. He scored 252 runs in seven innings, with a brilliant batting average of 36.00, hitting a century and a half-century. He also became the youngest debutant in the history of the Indian Premier League.

Meanwhile, he also caught attention for his 190 runs off just 90 balls in a multi-day red-ball game at the BCCI Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru. Amidst all this, people are also comparing his career’s start to that of the former legendary Indian batter Sachin Tendulkar, who made his international debut at the age of just 16.

However, former India spinner Venkatapathy Raju disagrees with this notion and has something serious to suggest to the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) while handling the young talents or prodigies like Vaibhav Suryavanshi.

It depends on the consistency – Venkatapthy Raju

Venkatapathy Raju feels that there’s a lot of time for Vaibhav Suryavanshi to get himself cemented with the sound technique and a maturity in his playing style.

“Yes, yes, he will take a lot of time. He has to be one of those guys who needs to well in U-19 World Cups. He has to perform quite a bit in domestic cricket. Four-day games. And we can give time. See, talent-wise, we've already seen him, what he can do with a white ball, right?” said Raju to the Hindustan Times.

“It depends on the consistency, right? We're a firm believer. We might talk about somebody like Sachin, right? First, Ranji Trophy debut, he got 100. Duleep Trophy, he got 100. Rest of India, he got 100, right? All three-day games. All four-day games. All five-day games. So, like that, I think when you know the talent, we should give him enough time to go and play, do well, and you feel that he's really good enough and he can perform, why not? We can still bring him in,” he added later.