Picture this.
A 15-year-old walks out to open in an IPL chase of 221.
He winks at his coach — Kumar Sangakkara — and says four words.
👉 "Coach, don't worry. It's done."
Then he walks into the dressing room.
Looks at two grown men — Donovan Ferreira and Lhuan-dre Pretorius — and casually announces:
"I'm going to hit 13 sixes. You two just do the rest."
He hit 10.
By his fifth six, Ferreira and Pretorius stopped laughing.
They sat down. Started counting backwards.
"This kid is actually going to do it," they whispered.
That's the level of belief Sangakkara says he's never seen in a teenager.
He's 15. Fifteen.
Sangakkara remembers his first sighting of Vaibhav in a Guwahati net session.
A tiny, brutal side net.
Jofra Archer and Sandeep Sharma running in with the new ball.
Nobody wanted to bat there.
Then this kid walks up.
"I'll bat."
What followed, Sangakkara says, sounded like gunshots off the bat.
Archer — yes, that Jofra Archer — eventually stopped mid-run-up.
And laughed.
Because a 14-year-old was treating his thunderbolts with absolute disdain.
Vaibhav is in Belfast with the senior India squad.
India lost the 1st T20I to Ireland on Friday — their first ever defeat to the Irish.
He didn't make the XI. Not yet.
But the debut is coming. Ireland. England. Asian Games.
The runway is lit.
Talent finds every era.
But self-belief like this — announce-it-before-you-do-it belief — is the rarest currency in sport.
Most 15-year-olds are scared of new-ball spells.
This one calls his shots in advance.
In sixes.
In double digits.
Indian cricket may have just found its next headline-maker. And he's only getting started.
That's all for now!
