What when youth isn't wasted on the young?

13-year-old Suryavanshi getting sold to the Royals has stirred up an interesting debate, writes Roshan Thyagarajan.

Ramji Srinivasan has had the privilege of working with the greatest cricket prodigy of all time in Sachin Tendulkar. Though Tendulkar was well into adulthood by the time Srinivasan came into the Indian team as a strength and conditioning coach, Srinivasan in general, has plenty of clarity on how the body operates at what age. 

That hardly makes him an expert on baby-faced savants, but when informed of Vaibhav Suryavanshi, the biomechanics expert’s ear perked up. He knew of a 13-year-old getting picked up by Rajasthan Royals for Rs 1.10 core during the recently held Indian Premier League auction, but he hadn’t seen him in action yet. 

His curiosity was piqued when informed of the boy’s age-defying physiology, and to corroborate the same, he was sent videos of his recent century for India's Under-19 against Australia’s Under-19. 

A minute or so later, Ramji called back. “…we need to run every single test there is on him,” he exulted. “He could be a gold mine of information. This is such a rare phenomenon. That body type, that’s freakish. The ease with which he’s clearing the ropes is remarkable for a 13-year-old. Hell, that would be remarkable for a 16-year-old.”

“We should do gene testing, bone-density testing, nutrition tests, blood tests and everything else to know what makes him click and then use that information to help assist the others so we can create a new generation of athletes who are better.”

Srinivasan, still excited, cites the example of NBA legend LeBron James to drive home the point, saying all the tests run on him since his debut (as an 18-year-old) have helped the future of the league. “We can use Vaibhav’s data to achieve the same for cricket in India,” he states. 

At this moment, a not-so-insignificant conflict rises to the surface. Though Srinivasan has the best of intentions in subjecting Suryavanshi to science, in becoming the subject, Suryavanshi ends up becoming a lab experiment which every sports enthusiast will want to tune into.

While that may not be the worst of things when it comes to the now-39-year-old LeBron and the anti-Father-Time-serum he swims in, it hardly sounds non-exploitative when it comes to a 13-year-old boy. 

And that is just one of the several ethical questions which crop up in due course of unpacking Suryavanshi’s young but interesting life.

Suryavanshi started cricket at around 9 when father Sanjiv noticed the southpaw’s penchant for a good, clean swing. What started there, rather quickly turned into a then 12-year-old booting up for Bihar’s Ranji Trophy tie against Mumbai in January this year. Next up came an Under-19 call-up, and then the IPL payout. 

So, Suryavanshi went from whacking about a broken tennis ball with a barely-bat in Samastipur to earning Rahul Dravid’s approval and guidance with the Royals in under four years.

“You always have to look out for such prodigies because they come once in a generation,” says Irfan Sait, the head coach at Karnataka Institute of Cricket in Bengaluru. “Robin (Uthappa) and Manish (Pandey) were like that. They were way ahead of the other boys in the came for their age so we played them against older boys very early on.

“The idea is to challenge them so they don’t get bored. When people are this talented, especially when they’re young, it’s hard to keep them focused for long that’s also why for every one or two prodigies who go on to become big, a lot of them fall through the cracks.”

Such is the gravity and the frequency of the aforementioned occurrence that it bodes a segue.

Let’s face it, for every Tendulkar, there is a Vinod Kambli, a Sadanand Viswanath, a Prithvi Shaw, an Unmukt Chand. That's the reality of the beast, and we haven’t even entered text pertaining to the current generation and its proclivity to get lost in smoke and mirrors. 

A propensity for recalcitrance is natural in humans, especially so among those who achieve a degree of fame. This typically is exacerbated among young achievers because they are more vulnerable to the tentacles of envy, greed, self-sabotage, and machinations of exploiters at every stage. 

One can always look at the likes of Tiger Woods, Max Verstappen and Nadia Comaneci, and drool over their achievements, for their age and beyond, but we don’t fully understand what these athletes have lost in the process, besides their childhood itself. 

“I can’t speak for this kid (Vaibhav) because maybe his mind is built differently, but in most cases, athletes who peak young and go into professional sport early, typically tend to have a difficult time as they get older,” says Mohammed Imaan, a sports psychologist working specifically with teens in Phoenix, Arizona.

“Some of them are very talented, but the issue isn’t their physiology, the issue is their psychology. When exposed to the world so young, you tend not to have a great centre to operate out of. You could come off as delusional even because your sense of normal has already left the building. In a lot of ways, this is no different from young rock stars going on to achieve fame before falling. They don’t know any better and to cope with their lost childhood, they end up using substances to cope with adulthood. Not always the case, but happens a lot.”

“My research shows that kids are better (suited for life) when they become professionals in their late teens,” he says. 

When citing the example of Lamine Yamal, the youngest player to represent and score for Spain at 16-years-old, Imaan says: “I am not saying anomalies won’t come by, but then again, we don’t know how he will turn out, say, 10-20 years from now. Life isn’t only about their professional careers, it’s about their life itself.”

Holistic as that is, it also feels like this age-restricted approach could deny us genius: Serena Williams, Steffi Graf, Michael Phelps and so on. But, the common thread among these child prodigies is that they had a support system to ensure they went far and lived up to their potential, and didn't fall off the wagon.  

Even Mike Tyson could be tamed by his coach Cus D’Amato, and that’s saying something. It’s when D’Amato passed on that Tyson lost his way. 

Perhaps, the answer to the question of ‘How young is too young?’ isn’t about the athletes as much as it is about the coaches, the parents, the system, the people…

And that’s probably why Dravid put his hand out.