Captain Shreyas Iyer and head coach Gautam Gambhir have already pointed out that the 15-year-old opener has to “wait”. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is a once-in-a-generation player. many view him as a player who could potentially forge an even greater legacy than Virat Kohli or Sachin Tendulkar Although the teenage opener is only in the first year of his international career. purely from a contribution standpoint, cracking the team’s internal competition has proved tough While the start of his international career has been blazing. As the cricket world assesses the pros and cons of this waiting period, it is worth noting how former India captain Sourav Ganguly handled the arrival of another exceptional talent, MS Dhoni , during his tenure at the helm of the national team.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi didn’t feature in any of the 5 T20Is against West Indies, with coach Gautam Gambhir and captain Shreyas Iyer suggesting that the teenage prodigy “has to wait”. Sourav Ganguly, however, has a different approach to handling MS Dhoni.
Because the management did not want to break up the opening partnership of Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson, while both Gambhir and Iyer have openly acknowledged that Sooryavanshi is a rare talent and the future of the team, the youngster was made to warm the bench for all five matches against the West Indies. Sharing his own leadership mantra, Ganguly once revealed how crucial it is for a leader to give a youngster consistent opportunities once they have been brought into the team. For both Gambhir and Iyer, the Samson-Abhishek duo remains the preferred way forward in T20Is, irrespective of Sooryavanshi’s immense talent. However, Ganguly believed in managing exceptional talents quite differently. “Ganguly’s mantra was simple: If he believed that a youngster was talented, he would get enough opportunities to prove his worth. This provided a much-needed, calmer atmosphere for the young player, as it was certain he would not be dropped after a single failure,” reads the book Winning Like Sourav: Think & Succeed Like Ganguly. With the Indian team now heading to New Zealand for another five-match T20I series, it will be interesting to see whether Gambhir and Iyer reassess their strategy regarding this generational talent, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.
