NEW DELHI: At just 15, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is already attracting the kind of attention usually reserved for cricket’s biggest superstars. The teenage batter has become one of the standout names of the IPL thanks to his fearless batting, clean six-hitting and confidence against top-level bowlers.Former India pacer Mohit Sharma believes the youngster’s popularity is unlike anything he has seen since MS Dhoni.“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 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.”Sharma added that the admiration Sooryavanshi receives from fans and people around the game is extraordinary for someone so young.“Because the love he gets from every side, from all directions, is so immense. I have seen only two such players,” he said.Former India cricketer Murali Karthik also compared the teenager’s rise to the early fame of Sachin Tendulkar.“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,” Karthik said.“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.”With performances and popularity growing together, Sooryavanshi is quickly becoming one of Indian cricket’s most talked-about young stars.
