Former Rajasthan Royals head coach Paddy Upton has highlighted the required emphasis on handling off-field scrutiny in terms of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's career growth and development.
The 15-year-old Sooryavanshi has taken the cricketing world by storm with a stellar season in the IPL, scoring over 700 runs at a strike rate of over 230. His meteoric rise has also seen him become the youngest player to be called up to an India squad, being added to the T20I squad for the tour of Ireland and England.
Upton stated that he would have worked on Sooryavanshi's ability to expect and deal with low scores, and believes that his on-field performances speak for themselves.
"For me, in terms of his on-field performance, as was repeatedly demonstrated in IPL, he’s got the right mindset to deliver on-field performance and even in the big moments. That’s pretty clear. Secondly, it’s important to give a dose of reality that nobody continues on a hot run of form. He’s had a seriously hot run of form in IPL. It’s almost impossible to expect that to continue. So, if I were around, I would work with him to expect a few low scores, some failure, some results not going his way. It’s absolutely normal and to be expected. And there’s no way anything different to that is going to happen,” Upton said, speaking on Sportstar.
Upton, who has been the mental conditioning coach of the 2011 World Cup-winning side, stated that the major issue to be dealt with is how Sooryavanshi manages external noise, something that even top athletes in the world struggle with.
"His single biggest challenge, I believe, is how he manages the external noise away from the playing arena. And I can tell you, some of the mentally strongest, some of the best athletes in the world, who’ve got significant experience, still get derailed by external noise, external expectations, external judgment. Whether it’s from fans, the media, sponsors, team owners, parents, coaches or teammates. And that’s going to be his single biggest challenge, to manage that noise, which is something that will be foreign to him. It’s not something that he’s ever faced before,” he added.
He further adds that with the young athletes like Sooryavanshi, there will be situations where people would associate with him in order to boost their own personal credentials.
“What happens with young superstars like this is that so many people crowd around them and want a piece of the action, and want to be seen to be part of his entourage. So he is going to get surrounded by a lot of people who don’t actually have his best interests at heart. They’ve got their own public visibility and ego and their own self-image at the front and centre,” Upton said.
The former coach further added that the first thing he would do as a mental conditioning coach is to prepare the batter for periods of failure, where he will be tested on how he deals with career lows.
"One of the first things I would do is prepare him for failure. To say there’s a good chance that in your first two or three innings, you don’t score runs. What is that going to feel like? What’s that going to look like? What’s that experience going to be like? And how are you going to manage yourself? So one of the key things is to prepare him for failure. That’s going to come, whether it comes now or later, it’s going to come,” he said.
Sooryavashi was recently in the headlines over a heated altercation with a Sri Lanka A player during a match for India A in the ongoing tri-nation series.
