India great Ravichandran Ashwin has said that he didn’t mean it when he said Vaibhav Sooryavanshi should ‘serve drinks’ to his teammates in a derogatory manner. The former spinner said he only meant that spending some matches on the bench would have been a good learning experience for the 15-year-old, who is clearly on a path to becoming a ‘really phenomenal’ batter.
Sooryavanshi became the youngest to get an India call-up last month, but he sat on the bench in the first two games against Ireland and then the series-opener against England. He got a run of three games but was dropped again after failing to cross 15. The three-T20I series against Zimbabwe became crucial for his nascent career, but the left-handed opener gave a befitting reply with
two half-centuries.
“I had said earlier that Vaibhav Sooryavanshi ‘can spend time, can serve someone drinks, can sit outside.’ It was not in a derogatory manner,” he said on his YouTube channel. “I was saying that he will get so much to learn. He has such a huge learning curve to go through that if he observes it while sitting outside, he’ll become even better. Don’t talk about dropping or picking — let him be, let him evolve. He’ll be a really phenomenal player,” he added.
Sooryavanshi is part of India’s Asian Games squad for September and will compete with Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma for a place in the starting 11.
Ashwin defends Sooryavanshi
The difference between the England and Zimbabwe series for Sooryavanshi was the pace available in the opposition attack and the pitches. In England, Jofra Archer had Sooryavanshi in a bind with his short-balls several times, but the teenager was executed his pull and hook shots better in Zimbabwe.
But Ashwin said people don’t need to read too much into it and write Sooryavanshi’s ‘obituary’ already, saying this is how he’ll improve.
“Who do you think is the strongest batsman against the short ball? Ricky Ponting? Did he never get out on a short ball? He got out too,” Ashwin argued. “So we have to understand everyone has strengths, everyone has weaknesses. These things are common in international cricket. It’s simple — show your strengths, hide your weaknesses, and keep working on them behind the scenes. All these questions… How many times did he play against Jofra Archer at Trent Bridge? These are all experiences. We can’t write his obituary immediately. Can’t write someone off just like that,” Ashwin said.
“He’s such a young kid. The problem is, we rate him so highly; he performed so well in the IPL, expectations skyrocketed. We expect him to perform like Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma every match, to be consistent. That’s not how it works. There will be ups and downs in life, in cricket too,” he added.
