Vaibhav Sooryavanshi

Not since Sachin Tendulkar has anyone so young been so good. Not since Brian Lara has anyone wielded the bat from such height at such speed with such success. More seasoned watchers are also put in the mind of Garry Sobers and Graeme Pollock.

Lara, the prince of Trinidad, was long retired when a little boy in Samastipur, Bihar, started emulating his back lift in the mid-2010s. His father, who had once aspired to become a cricketer himself, made sure he was able to hit thousands of balls every day to provide nurture to nature. At the age of 14, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, his baby face not giving away any of the power and ferocity his stocky frame could generate, started leaving grown men, some of them all-time greats who had played for longer than he had lived, bemused and helpless.

Sooryavanshi's batting style is almost a throwback to grainy footage of Sobers and Pollock bludgeoning the ball. His weight hangs back, his feet move economically, his arms stay wide of the body to create room for the bat swing, the wrists coil and uncoil, everything combining to create bat speed almost previously unseen.

Rajasthan Royals invested in Sooryavanshi before any others could. In his third match for them in 2025, Sooryavanshi left jaws on the floor, scoring the second-quickest IPL hundred and becoming the youngest T20 centurion at 14. He went onto dominate other boys at the Under-19 ODI World Cup in 2026 where he was the Player of the Tournament, before showing he was no flash in pan with the best season any batter has had at the IPL, topping the run charts with 776 at the astonishing strike rate of 237.30. India's national selectors were forced to make a place for him in the senior T20I side, slotting him into a combination that had won the T20 World Cup three months previously.
Sidharth Monga

- At 13, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi became the youngest to get an IPL deal when Rajasthan Royals (RR) bought him for INR 1.1 crore before IPL 2025.

- At 14, he became the youngest centurion in men's T20 cricket when he cracked 101 off 38 balls against Gujarat Titans (GT) that season. His hundred, off 35 deliveries, was the second-fastest in IPL history. In all, he scored 252 runs in seven games in IPL 2025, at a strike rate of 206.55.

- He took it to another level in 2026, shattering several records along the way as he made 776 runs at an astonishing strike rate of 237.30 in 16 matches, almost single-handedly taking RR to playoffs. He won the Orange Cap, MVP and Emerging Player awards.

- In that season, he also broke Chris Gayle's record for most sixes in a single season, finishing with 72 sixes.