From Bihars Tajpur To Ipl Stardom The Extraordinary Rise Of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi

A century-old temple comes first, then the house, then the cricketing shrine. A sharp deviation past the signage that marks the entry into Tajpur block in Samastipur district, Bihar, breaks into a narrow rugged path, its tarred flesh receding at the edges, stops at the temple. During the annual festival, thousands flock to the Shiva temple inside the canopied plot. The house on the edge of the temple is modest and unfenced; the first floor gleams in bright pink, matching the shirt colour of the locality’s most famous resident, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who is shattering records like breaking chalks in a classroom. Hugging the house, separated by translucent metallic sheets, is a rectangular cage that resembles a freight container. It’s the cricketing shrine, where Vaibhav spent hours honing his strokes. A set of plastic stumps are intact. One end is a concrete surface, without a crack. The other end is turf, the black soil layer whipping up dust and debris when a breeze sweeps by. During the pandemic, his father Sanjeev and relatives laboured for nearly a month to set up the initial structure, so that his practice would not lag. Even when Vaibhav is not around, his relatives and boys in the neighbourhood tend to the pitches, as though it is a holy spot. “It’s an emotional place for Vaibhav. Even after he has become a star, he practises here when he is around,” says uncle Pintu Singh. “With him, the atmosphere becomes vibrant. The chats, banter, the stories, they would go on,” he adds. The boys in the neighbourhood would pass by, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Some of them have bowled to him, some idolise him. One of them, Munna, is a helper in a nearby photocopy shop. “I am 25, used to play club cricket and consider myself a decent off-spinner. I clearly remember getting him out bowled, because it was the only time I had bowled him!” The sweet sound of leather on wood is the siren that blares the news of Vaibhav’s arrival. “Ours is a quiet village, so you hear every sound in the vicinity. Harvest time, it’s the sound of tractors. So when Vaibhav is around, you hear the sound of him hitting the ball,” says Shrikant Jha, a local resident and a freelance journalist. “At first, it seemed strange like someone pelting stones at your wall, because most of us have not even seen a real cricket ball in our life. Only on television,” he adds. “Even cable television, internet and mobile connectivity are recent arrivals. It’s only in the last 15-20 years that we started getting a stable electricity connection. We were not quite backward but were stuck in the past. Now, we have the future of cricket,” he says. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's home in Samastipur, Bihar. (Sandip G) Now, between the temple and the cricketing shrine, the locals have a little deity. “Only that we watch him on TV than in real life,” says Shrikant. The Boss Baby. Mr Universe. These are epithets bestowed upon Vaibhav Sooryavanshi after he broke the record six haul of Chris Gayle, the Universe Boss in the Indian Premier League (IPL). The Jamaican smacked 59 maximums in 2012; Vaibhav’s six-metre had nudged 65 (until the second qualifier). Gayle, his IPL days long gone, feted him: “What a phenomenal player Vaibhav is. Great entertainment young man! New Six machine,” Gayle wrote on X. He hits like a machine, a programmable six-hitting machine rather. The frequency is bewildering. He has struck one every fourth ball; Gayle, the most voracious six-hitter of all time, swiped one every ninth ball. Vaibhav’s sixes come in all sorts, through drives, cuts, pulls, slogs, and ramps. He hasn’t spared the deadliest and the most decorated fast bowlers. This season, he has pillaged Jasprit Bumrah, Pat Cummins, Kagiso Rabada and Josh Hazlewood, the four great all-format bowlers of the era. His IPL career is just 33 games old but he has the highest strike in the world in the shortest format (221.6). The greats of the game have not stopped showering superlatives. Kevin Pietersen, who signed a jersey from him, raved on X: “Sooryavanshi is an absolute joke! My goodness.” He invited him to his show Switch, where the 15-year-old outlined his big dream: “I want to score a double hundred in T20s. If I bat all 20 overs, I can.” He uttered those words with a Buddha-like detachment. He has a poise that belies his age. LONG READS | From vanvaas to the IPL: How Bihar went from 15 years of cricket exile to five players in one season Sachin Tendulkar was quick to point out the finesse of his technique. “Vaibhav’s bat swing has been outstanding. What’s even more remarkable is how beautifully he clears his front foot to create room for balls aimed at his legs. This freedom allows him to play the way he does,” he posted on X after his 97 against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH). One of Vaibhav’s coaches who had worked with him at Royals, Zubin Bharucha, says that his hands and technique remind him of Brian Lara, the 15-year-old’s idol, and the head of Tendulkar. “The boy is very aware of his game. Such a sharp head,” Bharucha observes. He has the same relationship with time and space like most great batsmen; a kind of fly-vision, the ability to strip it all in slow motion. The fundamentals are strong to suggest that his bubble will not burst. Eyes, balance, hand, power, bat-swing, dreamy contact — his game has a fearful symmetry. His batting is not yet a finished product — a frightening thought for the bowlers’ union. Imperfections would be ironed out; the repertoire enhanced. His Royals coach Kumar Sangakkara has just one piece of advice: “Just enjoy the game.” He certainly is, and he is making watching the game enjoyable too. But the world around him is careful to not overburden him with hype and attention. The dizzying success has those around him worried if the pressure and hype would crush him. His parents are prohibited from talking to the media during the IPL or any other tournament; the beeline of advertisers queuing up for him has been politely turned away. This is an age where most teenagers of his age would be busy preparing for board exams. Outside the arena, he is like a careworn teenager, polishing off ice creams, experimenting with different cuisines, bantering with his teammates and switching off from the sport. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. But Vaibhav is willing to wear it. In the few interactions he had with the media, often during the post-match presentation ceremony, he has shown a level of maturity that some sportsmen take ages to develop. He is neither nervous nor over-excited with a microphone in hand. The words are firm and clear. His method, he said at the presentation ceremony, are uncomplicated. “I just think about who the bowlers are on the opposition team, how I can face them on this wicket, how big the boundaries are, just these kinds of things. I just try to stay positive with my intent. When I do that, the bowlers stay under pressure. So I try to continue that and dominate the game,” he said. The pre-game visualisation reminded South Africa great AB de Villiers of Matthew Hayden. Vaibhav's practising space adjoining the house. (Sandip G) It’s untrue that he is too young to feel the pressure. It’s just that he is utterly fearless. His teammate Dhruv Jurel threw light on his method. “The best thing about Vaibhav is that he doesn’t plan anything,” Jurel says. “Because he practises a lot and he always backs himself. That’s what he does every time he goes out and plays. He backs himself. He doesn’t even have a shadow of doubt that ‘I am not able to do it’.” Vaibhav’s emergence has to be viewed through the social and cultural milieu of his village and region. The Sooryavanshis are landed and have been running a fairly successful jewellery business, not extremely prosperous but enough to meet ends. The surroundings, though, were different. The town had just a cluster of basic shops, the kirana and dawai stalls. Mobile recharging and repairing shops have sprung up. “Most rely on agriculture but in the ’90s, we had extreme weather conditions and people started to migrate,” says Shrikant. A sporting career was unimaginable in Samastipur before Vaibhav burst on the scene. “Cricket was no more than a distraction or a pastime, which the men from cities played,” says Shrikant. But in Mumbai, where Sanjeev landed with Bollywood dreams at the age of 19, the city’s devotion for the game left a lasting impression on him. He did odd jobs like working as a bouncer at a nightclub in Colaba, as a janitor in the city’s port. In spare time, he rushed to the Oval Maidan. “There, young kids playing cricket would be wearing pads and helmets. A few of them were so good that one could watch them for hours. I decided then that be it a son or a daughter, I will make my children cricketers,” Sanjeev had told The Indian Express in the past. When Sanjeev ventured into realising his dreams, he stumbled onto practical difficulties. Samastipur, the district headquarters, had humble facilities. He took him to the most reputed coach in the town, Brajesh Jha, a former district and club cricketer, teaching kids informally. Brajesh was reluctant, because Vaibhav was barely eight and looked even younger. “But what I saw surprised me. Vaibhav had natural movements, was flexible even though he was chubby and learned everything fast,” the coach says. Like a blotting paper, he would stress. The academy, in Patel Field near the Samastipur bus stand, was roughly 15 km away. Travel would consume anywhere from 30-90 minutes depending on weather and the state of the road. In monsoon, the drains overflowed; in peak hours, traffic jams were frequent; heavy showers would damage roads, months would pass before they were repaired. “Sometimes, we had to wait till the government changed,” says Ram Chaudhary, careening his rickety electric rickshaw past a pothole in the middle of the road. He rattles out a local proverb: “The roads look straight but the routes are crooked.” It fits smugly with Vaibhav’s narrative too. Shortly, Sanjeev realised that his son should be raised in a more competitive environment, lest he be wasted in Tajpur’s obscurity. So every weekend, he took him to the GenNext Academy in Patna. The 90-km ride, often in ramshackle buses, changed his destiny. Patna was more competitive and aggressive; there was no consideration for his age and the infrastructure was better. His coach Manish Ojha, a former Ranji player, threw him to boys twice his age. He didn’t flinch. He noticed the same trait as Brajesh did. The ability to absorb details fast. “You just teach him something, and the next moment you see the change in his game. I don’t remember teaching him something more than once: he would pick it up and not only practise but perfect it in matches. He always had this ability to play according to the demands of the ball or the situation and come up with a perfect response,” says Manish. With stunned eyes, Manish saw him blossom and shatter bowlers and records without fuss. “He is easily 3-4 years ahead of his age. Not just in his batting but also in his mind. He is disciplined, does not get carried away and works really hard in the nets,” says Manish. Brajesh remembers the difficulty in dragging him out of the nets. “We had just one pitch and he batted for hours. No one would get him out and the others wouldn’t get to bat,” he says. In the Sooryavanshi household, the nights were short and the days long. “Whatever I am today, wherever I stand, it’s because of them. My mother would sleep at 11 at night and wake up at 2 in the morning so that she could cook for me. My father quit his job, woke up early in the morning. My elder brother took over my father’s responsibilities. It was tough at home but my father insisted, ‘You’ll make it’,” Vaibhav recalled in a podcast. The word spread in Patna’s cricket circles about the boy who is humbling men twice his age. The turning point came when someone informed former Jharkhand cricketer and Rajasthan Royals’ scout Samar Qadri about him. He decided to have a look, watched him closely, bowled at him and, at the end of day, excitedly informed the team management about the boy who could be king. He was 13 when Royals snaffled him. He made his debut at 14 and at 15, the world is gazing at him with wonder. Some make age look like just a number; some make it look like a wonder. Tajpur now has a holy trinity of temple, cricketing shrine and a deity.