At 15, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is already producing numbers that would be remarkable for a much older cricketer. Yet one pattern has become impossible to ignore. He keeps getting within touching distance of a century and then falling short.
His latest near-miss came in the Duleep Trophy semi-final against Central Zone, where the teenager scored 92 from 81 balls for East Zone. He reached his half-century in just 42 deliveries and appeared to be heading towards another major milestone before attempting to clear the boundary against Harsh Dubey. He was caught for 92, ending a 161-run opening partnership with Abhimanyu Easwaran.
The dismissal meant Sooryavanshi had now been out in the 90s seven times in a period of roughly nine months. His scores in those innings have been 93, 96, 93, 97, 96, 94 and 92.
That is where the comparison with Sachin Tendulkar begins.
Is Sooryavanshi following Sachin’s unwanted pattern?
Tendulkar was famously dismissed in the 90s 27 times in international cricket, including 17 times in ODIs and 10 in Tests. His repeated failures to convert 90s into centuries became one of the more talked-about statistical quirks of his otherwise extraordinary career.
Sooryavanshi’s seven 90s have come across a much wider range of cricket, including domestic cricket, IPL, Under-19 cricket and A-team cricket. Comparing the two at this stage would therefore be premature.
Still, the frequency is striking, particularly because Sooryavanshi has not been inching towards those scores through defensive batting. His dismissals have often come while he has continued to attack.
Against Central Zone, for example, he was trying to hit Dubey for six when he was dismissed. His Duleep Trophy innings contained seven fours and seven sixes, underlining the aggressive approach that has become a defining part of his batting.
That makes the “nervous nineties” explanation difficult to apply.
The dismissals have often come while attacking.
Sooryavanshi’s pattern is less about becoming defensive as he approaches three figures and more about continuing to play the same aggressive cricket that got him there.
Several of his previous 90s ended while he was attempting attacking strokes rather than simply trying to survive until reaching his century.
That distinction matters because a batter who repeatedly reaches 90 and then gets out defending may have a very different problem from one who reaches 90 and continues taking calculated risks.
In Sooryavanshi’s case, the available evidence suggests the latter.
His latest innings is a good example. He had already completed a record-breaking half-century and was in control before attempting to clear the boundary. His dismissal did not come from a sudden collapse in technique or an obvious refusal to attack. It came from the same approach that had helped him score 92 from 81 balls.
Sooryavanshi misses Sachin’s Duleep Trophy record.
There was an additional layer to Monday’s dismissal because eight more runs would have taken Sooryavanshi past one of Tendulkar’s youngest-age records.
Tendulkar was 17 years and 262 days old when he scored a Duleep Trophy century during the 1990-91 season.
Sooryavanshi was only 15 years and 157 days old when he made his 92 against Central Zone. A century would therefore have made him the youngest batter to reach three figures in the competition.
Instead, he finished eight runs short.
He did, however, leave the match with another Duleep Trophy record. His half-century made him the youngest player to score a fifty in the tournament, surpassing a record that had stood for 57 years. The previous record belonged to Laxman Singh, who was 16 years and 23 days old when he reached the milestone in 1969.
Sooryavanshi reached his fifty in 42 balls before continuing to 92.
The numbers tell two different stories
The repeated 90s may look frustrating from the outside, but they also reveal how regularly Sooryavanshi is putting himself into positions where a century becomes possible.
His latest Duleep Trophy innings was only his second half-century in first-class cricket, and his previous best was 93 for Bihar against Meghalaya in the 2025-26 Ranji Trophy Plate Group.
That context is important.
At 15, he is still learning to bat in different formats and against different levels of bowling. His ability to repeatedly produce substantial scores is encouraging, even if he has not yet converted one of these nineties into three figures.
The immediate temptation is to treat the seven dismissals as evidence of a weakness. There is another way to read them. They may simply be the by-product of an extremely aggressive young batter who is already capable of playing long innings but has not yet developed the patience required to convert every opportunity.
The Sachin comparison should come with a warning.
The Tendulkar comparison makes for an attractive headline, but it should not obscure the difference between the two careers.
Tendulkar accumulated his 27 international dismissals in the 90s over a career spanning 24 years and hundreds of international innings. Sooryavanshi’s seven have come in a fraction of that time and across several different levels of cricket.
He is not “becoming Sachin” because he has been dismissed seven times in the 90s.
In fact, the more interesting comparison is that both players have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to get themselves close to major milestones. What happens next will depend on whether Sooryavanshi learns to recognise the moments when the attack needs to be controlled rather than accelerated.
Another record already belongs to him.
Even without the century, Sooryavanshi’s Duleep Trophy performance has added another significant entry to his growing record book.
He became the youngest batter to score a fifty in the competition, reaching the milestone at 15 years and 157 days. He also captained East Zone for a period during the match after regular captain Ishan Kishan left the field with a finger injury, and he made an impact with a successful DRS review that helped dismiss Aryan Juyal.
His 92 also helped East Zone match Central Zone’s first-innings total of 266, although East Zone subsequently lost 10 wickets for 105 runs after the strong opening stand.
For now, then, the story is not really that Sooryavanshi keeps failing to score centuries.
It is that a 15-year-old keeps getting close enough to make them seem inevitable.
Seven times, he has reached the 90s. Seven times, the century has escaped him.
Tendulkar’s record remains intact, but Sooryavanshi has already broken a 57-year-old Duleep Trophy record of his own.
At this stage of his career, the nineties are less a warning sign than a reminder of how quickly he is arriving at the doorstep of history.
Vabihav Sooryavanshi is getting out in his 90sAFP (enhanced)
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Source: Gulf News
Vabihav Sooryavanshi is getting out in his 90sAFP (enhanced)
