About A Boy

What drives the teenage cricket sensation from Samastipur?

- Md Asghar Khan

ON a nondescript mofussil street in Bihar's Samastipur district stands an unremarkable house—except for a cemented pitch, enclosed by nets, to its left. “Whose house is this?” a visibly excited girl, no more than eight years old, asks her two friends—a girl and a boy, both not younger than six. “Tell me, tell me!” she insists but, without waiting for a reply, blurts out the name herself: “Vaibhav Suryavanshi, the batting sensation!” Her face lights up, as if she has won a contest, and the three friends pause a while, taking in the sight, before walking on, a happy spring in their steps.

This house in Motipur town in Samastipur district belongs to the family of a young boy whose name echoes with pride not just in this neighbourhood, but across Bihar and the entire Indian cricketing world. At just 14, Vaibhav became the youngest player ever to score a century in the Indian Premier League (IPL), hitting a blistering 101 off 35 balls. He is now the fastest Indian and the second-fastest IPL player to reach a century. This breakthrough performance has earned Vaibhav a spot in India's Under-19 squad for the upcoming bilateral series in England in June-July. He is currently training for this opportunity, one more step on a meteoric rise marked by years of hard work.

Vaibhav's grandmother, 66-year-old Usha Singh, has seen Vaibhav growing up and playing cricket passionately. “He would just pick up a plastic bat and a red plastic ball and run off to Thakurbaari nearby,” she recalls Vaibhav as a five-year-old. “We would tell him to not play in the sun, but he would never listen. I always knew this child would go very far. When he started playing everywhere, I knew he would play for India one day.” The grandmother recalls that her 52-year-old son and Vaibhav's father, Sanjeev Suryavanshi, shared the same passion for the sport. “As we focused on his studies instead, Sanjeev never made it. But he was determined that his son would,” says Usha Singh.