The 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi doesn’t appear to be a serious worry for Afghanistan captain Ibrahim Zadran ahead of their first T20I at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on Sunday. Zadran said his team has already worked out the tactics to defeat the young batter.
Sooryavanshi joins in the series with and impressive record against Zimbabwe with whom he won Player of the Series. The teenager opened the batting with Abhishek Sharma in the first two matches of his three-match series before hitting 50 and 81 in the final two, respectively.
But his name is not yet mathematically guaranteed to feature in India’s squad for the first game as Sanju Samson too has been included in the squad. Sooryavanshi has also played recently in Duleep Trophy final in East Zone where his team defeated South Zone on the basis of 1st innings lead.
The youngster made his debut for India earlier this year after making a mesmerizing IPL appearance with the Rajasthan Royals with 776 runs. His initial international outings were less successful, with three low scores resulting in him being dropped from the XI.
Zadran feels Afghanistan already has some decent information on Sooryavanshi owing to the fact that a few Afghan batsmen have already played against the former during the IPL season.
“He’s a wonderful talent,” Zadran said Saturday before the match. He also said that Afghanistan had discussed about the youngster, watched his videos and learnt from players playing against him.
The Afghanistan skipper said his side would keep everything very simple and just go through their plans but not “think a lot about the teenager”.