Former Indian keeper-batter Robin Uthappa has expressed his confidence in the teen batting prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi having a bigger impact in white-ball formats than the legendary batter Sachin Tendulkar.
Speaking exclusively on the CommBoxTV YouTube channel, Uthappa has stated that Sooryavanshi should be managed in a proper way, and he shouldn’t go down the route of Vinod Kambli and Prithvi Shaw, who fell off the wagon after a promising start to their career.
“He could have a bigger impact on white-ball than Tendulkar. But how he’s managed is going to be important. We’ve seen in Indian cricket exciting players come through the ranks. We saw Vinod Kambli and Prithvi Shaw and started asking what they would become when they were 17-18 years old. And then suddenly they fall off the wagon,” Robin Uthappa said on the CommBoxTV YouTube channel.
Sooryavanshi, who made his T20I debut on the recent England tour, has scored a half-century in the first T20I against Zimbabwe, becoming the youngest-ever male cricketer to win the player of the series award after scoring 150 runs in three games.
Furthermore, Uthappa warned Sooryavanshi of female attention that could come his way once he turns 18, advising him to stay pristine for the game over a longer period of time. However, he reckoned that there would be ups and downs as part of Sooryavanshi’s journey.
“So that will be Vaibhav’s first test. Can he stay pristine for the game over a period of five years? He’s 15 now, so can he stay pristine till he’s 20? There’s so much innocence to who he is that you want that to be protected. I love the fact that he’s saying no to every advertisement and he’s focusing only on cricket. Because when he’s 18, he’ll start being perceived as a man and the female attention will come. That can be a distraction as well,” he added.
“There will be trials and tribulations in his career, and how he overcomes those will be key. I only hope he has the right support system and mentors to protect him from the world and allow him to live in a bubble until he is ready to explore the outside world. His career is not going to be as pristine as we want it to be. There are going to be ups and downs as part of the journey,” he concluded.
