“He looks as talented as Sachin and Virat”: Kapil Dev lauds Vaibhav Sooryavanshi but with a warning

Kapil Dev, who led India to the ODI World Cup title in 1983, is the latest legendary cricketer to opine on Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. The 15-year-old is currently in England for the ongoing five-match T20I series, but the team management hasn’t included him in the playing XI so far. He was benched for the two matches in Ireland and was not considered for the series opener against the Harry Brook-led team.

Kapil compared him with Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, but urged everyone to refrain from talking too much about him.

“I haven’t seen much of him, but he looks talented. There is no doubt about it. We are talking too much about him at the moment. Give him time and don’t make him big, as he is young and lacks experience. If you talk about talent, he is as good as Sachin and Virat. We can see his talent, but only in the T20 format. He will have to prove himself in other formats of the game. Can he play five maiden overs in Test cricket? Virender Sehwag will not think like that. However, we talk like that when it comes to Test cricket,” Kapil Dev told Vikrant Gupta on Sports Tak.

“He is fabulous in T20 cricket. You won’t get even one percent of people in the world who can impact the game like him,” he added.

Vikrant then questioned Kapil about Vaibhav’s delayed debut.

“The broadcaster is putting up his posters, and everyone is talking about him, but his debut has been delayed. Are you going to play him in such a situation?” Vikrant said.

“There are two things. We can talk about Sachin, as he was the same age when he played. We used to think whether we were giving him a debut too early. If you look at history, you will come to know. Are we delaying? If he is ready, don’t count his age and look at his ability. If you think he can play, play him. He will go through a bad patch as well. It will be interesting to see how he comes out of it. There are a handful of cricketers who never went through a bad patch. Be it Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, or Vivian Richards, everyone has faced bad times. We are not talking about his bad patch at the moment. He looks talented, and I feel the cricketers of the new generation have a lot of confidence in them,” Kapil responded.