Former India pacer Mohit Sharma has likened Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s ‘aura’ to the legendary MS Dhoni. Sharma said the 15-year-old batter is only the second cricketer, after Dhoni, that he has seen getting an incomparable level of admiration irrespective of where in India he goes to play.
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Sooryavanshi has become a face of the IPL at this slender age because of just how extraordinary a cricketer he is. From a country glut with cricketing talent, he has somehow managed to stand out, with his six-hitting ability, his mindset to maintain a high tempo, and his sheer lack of fear for the best bowlers in the world.
“There are two such players… before this, there was one player, Mahendra Singh Dhoni,
for whom, no matter which of the ten franchises, which of the ten grounds you go to, you will see one name, the same aura, the same love for him everywhere,” Sharma, who played with Dhoni for India and CSK, said on Cricbuzz. “And now, the second person I’ve seen like this is one who, across all ten franchises, whichever ground you walk into, the commentators standing there, the cameramen, the players from the opposition side, they all try to have a conversation with him. Because the love he gets from every side, from all directions, is so immense. I have seen only two such players,” he added.
Dhoni reached this level of admiration and interest at his prime, when he had won every trophy he contested in, and became an icon for his fans. So, Sooryavanshi being a crowd-puller at 15 is also comparable to Sachin Tendulkar, of how Indians would have reacted had the Master Blaster debuted in the IPL era, and made waves with his batting.
Murali Karthik, on the same show, made that comparison
“I mean, seriously, he’s on a whole different level. I just can’t understand how God has given him something so special in just one lifetime. I asked someone recently, ‘Who even played cricket at the age of fifteen who we could still remember?’. It was the great SRT… Now, you can go anywhere in the world and ask anyone, and they will tell you they definitely know the name Vaibhav Suryavanshi, in every country where cricket is played. So, for a 15-year-old kid to be so world-renowned … he is like a genuine prodigy, he’s a genius, that kid, at just fifteen years of age,” Karthik said.
