Teenage prodigy must heed the game's cautionary tales

Whatever happened to Freddy Adu? It is a question many will have asked in the 20 years since he made his senior debut.

- HARRY LATHAM-COYLE

You may recall the tale of the Ghana-born, USA-raised teenage football phenom, drafted into Major League Soccer (MLS) as a 14-year-old accompanied by the loftiest of comparisons with Pele. This, the headlines cried, was the wunderkind to drive America’s footballing expansion; the face of the future and the boy to carry the burden of a nation’s dreams on his shoulders.

Or not, it proved. Adu concluded a perfectly creditable playing career with Swedish club Osterlen in 2021, collecting 17 international caps and an impressive array of stamps in his passport along the way. Stints in Portugal, Monaco, Greece, Turkey, Brazil, Serbia and Finland form remarkable chapters in an incredible sporting story – even if Adu never lived up to the unfair potential others promised of him.

It is a cautionary fairytale that unfortunately came to mind when watching Vaibhav Suryavanshi make a most remarkable 35-ball century for Rajasthan Royals on Monday. If the public had enjoyed passing familiarity with the name of the teenager from the Bihar province in India’s far northeast after he became the youngest player ever bought at the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction in December, his slamming of the first ball he faced in the competition for six thrust him further into the cricketing consciousness.

His ton, however, was something else entirely. This was not an effort to be lauded simply due to the 14-year-old’s tender age but one of the great IPL innings, the fastest century ever made by an Indian in a competition that has transformed the sport.