The Prodigy Club
TOI Quick Edits are written by a team of seasoned journalists from the Times of India's Edit Page and TOI-Online who respond to important news stories as they develop. The team comprises senior journalists with wide-ranging interests who debate and opine on the news and issues of the day. LESS ... MORE
Vaibhav Suryavanshi has batted himself into a TRP bonanza but the expectations are heavy
People are recalling Sachin's debut. It's not just his curls and twinkling, teenaged smile that Vaibhav Suryavanshi shares. A similar fearlessness is also being identified. Sachin was 16 at his Test debut against Pakistan, in Karachi. Vaibhav is 14, he hit a six off his debut IPL ball, and a century in his third match of the competition. This 38-ball hundred stacks behind only Chris Gayle's 30-ball hundred in IPL 2013. Sure, Jaipur ain't Karachi. But IPL is arguably India's biggest stage today, particularly across its hundreds of millions of small, hand-held screens. Countless teenagers are on the other side, taking a break from their studies by watching Vaibhav knock it around. That the pressure hasn't got to him and his talent, has been wonderful to witness.
Like a lot of stories of child prodigies, this one has been scripted by encouraging and sacrificing parents. Tiger Woods's father handed him a putter before he was one and he was smacking shots by age two. Sometimes it's the coach who's the parent figure. Like Bela Karolyi, who groomed Nadia Comaneci to score gymnastic's first perfect 10.0 score at the 1976 Montreal Olympics; she was 14 too. At times, fate takes things more serendipitously in hand. Like Lamine Yamal, the Barcelona winger who made his first-team debut at 15 and became the club's youngest player since La Liga was formed 90+ years earlier. An immigrant child, he was playing at the right place, right time to be spotted for a Barca trial at age 7!
Child sport prodigies are a TRP bonanza. But children's bodies and minds develop in varying ways. Sachin, Steffi Graf, Michael Phelps and Pele got into the history books because of how triumphantly they aged…and how finely they were nurtured. As Vaibhav goes to bat again tomorrow, he will have to play the pressure of expectations right as much as the swinging ball.
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