Vaibhav Sooryavanshi ignored Virat’s advice. Virat spent years ignoring them too

Two weeks ago in Ahmedabad, Virat Kohli put his arm around Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s shoulder and said something the 15-year-old will need to remember for the rest of his career.

“Do not pay attention to who is saying what or how they are saying it.” Sooryavanshi later said the moment felt like a dream, that it didn’t even feel like it was actually Virat Kohli. That the man spoke to him like an elder brother. He stored the words carefully, the way you store something precious.

He forgot them on Monday.

In Dambulla, after a Super Over that India A lost to Sri Lanka A in circumstances already fraying with controversy, Sooryavanshi turned back. He had been walking away, gloves tapped with Suryansh Shedge, head down, done. Then a Sri Lanka A fielder — Vishen Halambage, clapping, talking — said something. And the 15-year-old, who had just faced Jasprit Bumrah in front of 50,000 people, decided he wasn’t done after all. He pushed Halambage with his left hand before Niroshan Dickwella stepped in to separate them.

It lasted seconds. It will be discussed for days.

WHAT HAPPENED IN DAMBULLA

The match itself had been a powder keg. India A and Sri Lanka A had tied at 265 apiece, a no-ball controversy had dragged both sets of players back onto the field after they’d begun leaving, and Tilak Varma had spent considerable time in the umpires’ faces before the Super Over was eventually played. By the time Mathulan’s yorker ended India A’s chase, nerves were already stripped raw.

Sooryavanshi had scored five runs off two balls in the Super Over. it was not enough, and not through want of trying. As the hosts celebrated, he and Shedge began the long walk back. What followed was brief but ugly: words from Halambage, a response from Sooryavanshi, a push, and then cooler heads, Dickwella, Sri Lanka A captain Sahan Arachchige, pulling everyone apart. A gripping contest had its ending soured.

NOT THE FIRST TIME

This is, in truth, a familiar script, at least on the field, in the heat of competition. In December 2025, during India’s chase of 348 in the Under-19 Asia Cup final in Dubai, Sooryavanshi hammered 26 off 10 balls before Pakistan pacer Ali Raza dismissed him and celebrated with some pointed words. Sooryavanshi did not simply walk off. He turned, gestured, said his piece. It went viral. People talked about it for days then, too.

Two incidents, separated by months, do not define a character. Away from the field, Sooryavanshi has consistently been the picture of graciousness — touching Sunil Gavaskar’s feet during IPL 2026, having Kohli sign his Rajasthan Royals cap and wearing it in matches whenever he wasn’t wearing the Orange Cap. The boy who pushed Halambage on Monday is not a different person from the one who bent down before Gavaskar. He is the same person, at 15, still learning which version of himself to be in which moment.

What the two incidents do suggest is something more specific and more understandable: that when Sooryavanshi is in the arena and the needle goes in, he responds. In kind, immediately, without much calculation. That is a different thing from being an angry young man.

SHOULD WE JUDGE HIM?

Kohli, it is worth remembering, was not always the man dispensing wisdom on the outfield at Ahmedabad. In his early years, he was as likely to be at the centre of a flashpoint as he was at the crease. He sledged, he gestured, he wore every dismissal and every slight on his face. Cricket boards had quiet words. Coaches intervened. The aggression, back then, looked like a liability.

What changed was not the fire. It never left. What changed was the direction it burned.

Kohli learned, over years and through hard experience, to pour every last drop of that intensity into his batting and his fitness rather than into altercations with opposition fielders. The temper became hunger. The combustibility became an unrelenting refusal to be second-best. By the time he was telling a 15-year-old in Ahmedabad to ignore the noise, he knew precisely how hard that instruction was to follow — because he had failed at it himself, repeatedly, before he got it right.

Federer’s arc is almost identical. The Swiss who became synonymous with grace and stillness — the man they called the most elegant player the sport had ever seen, spent his teenage years breaking rackets and screaming at linesmen. His own coach Peter Carter despaired of his temperament. What Federer eventually understood was that the rage was energy, and energy could be redirected. The elegant champion was built on top of an angry kid who learned, slowly, what to do with himself.

Sooryavanshi is not that angry kid. But he is a fiercely competitive one who, on two occasions, has let provocation get the better of him. That is a narrower charge, and a far more forgivable one.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

At 15, while most of his peers worry about board exams, Sooryavanshi is facing Bumrah and Archer and Cummins in packed stadiums. He has already done things most cricketers never do at all: the fastest IPL century by an Indian, the Orange Cap, 776 runs at a strike rate of 237. He is living impossibly fast.

The incidents in Dubai and Dambulla are not cause for alarm. They are, if anything, evidence that the engine is running hot, which is precisely where you want it for a batter of his kind. The task now is what it was for Kohli, what it was for Federer: not to cool the engine, but to learn to steer.

He already has the best possible advice. He heard it two weeks ago, in Ahmedabad, from someone who needed it once himself.

The runs are already here. The rest will follow.

– Ends