Immediately after a brutal cricket match, coaches usually look for answers in spreadsheets, data metrics or video footage. They look for the precise moment when the strategic plan falls apart at the edges. But when a 15-year-old kid from Bihar systematically demolished Lucknow Super Giants at the start of the Indian Premier League season, Justin Langer did something he has only done twice in his entire life.

He walked across the field, put thirty-five years of elite cricket pride aside, and asked an opposing athlete, in this case a 15-year-old teenager, for a selfie.

Langer first felt that specific, unattainable desire to be starstruck at Optus Stadium, standing in front of his childhood Australian rules football hero, Stephen Michael. The second time was in the presence of Vaibhav Suryavanshi, a boy born in 2011, who had spent the evening hitting Langer’s bowlers into parts of the stadium he was not aware of.

The least understood word in sports: talent

Later writing in his column for The Nightly, Langer admitted that he was completely charmed. In a single IPL season, Suryavanshi has hit 65 sixes so far – An awesome metric of destructive consistency that is second to none in IPL history. The closest to glory comes Chris Gayle’s legendary 2012 campaign, where he hit 59 shots across the boundary.

And as the tournament reached its conclusion, the teenage talent did it again. In Wednesday’s high-stakes eliminator against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Suryavanshi turned a high-pressure playoff into his personal playground by scoring 97 runs off just 29 balls. When a modern great like Pat Cummins tried to regain control by rocketing a 140 kmph delivery over the top of the off-stump, Vaibhav did not defend. he just turned it around The entire arc of his bat and was deposited over the Australian captain’s head.

It’s the kind of raw, uneducated dominance that forces you to rethink everything you understand about a specific sport. It bypasses the traditional paths of development. It doesn’t feel like it’s a skill acquired over thousands of hours; It feels like a birthright.

And that got Langer thinking about the most overused and least understood word in sports terminology: talent.

While Vaibhav was rewriting the rules of what was possible for a 15-year-old in India, an entirely different sporting monument was being built on the other side of the planet. In Melbourne, a 38-year-old veteran player named Scott Pendlebury was preparing to run out for his 433rd game in the AFL, breaking the all-time VFL/AFL appearance record.

Pendlebury was never considered a football immortal. At the age of 16, he was a basketball guard with an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship – a position he eventually left for a young kid named Patty Mills. When Pendlebury chose football, no one saw a lanky kid selected at pick five and predicted a generational legacy. He was not a product of pure, explosive destiny like Donald Bradman or Sachin Tendulkar.

Instead, Pendlebury built his talent in obscurity. He took his basketball DNA – spatial awareness, soft hands, an uncanny ability to slow down time while chaos unfolded around him – and infused it into 21 seasons of brutal, weekly contact play. If Vaibhav Suryavanshi is talent in its most raw, God-given expression, then Scott Pendlebury is talent as a verb. It is a craft that has been refined, maintained and steadfastly preserved over decades of unseen dawns.

How do we see greatness?

Langer’s observation goes to the heart of how we view greatness. As sports fans, we are always fascinated by this advent. We love the flash of lightning, the teenage genius who appears out of nowhere, bowling at 150 kilometers per hour, before the world is even ready to remember his name.

But as former Australian coach John Buchanan used to remind Langer, longevity is the ultimate mark of a true champion. This left Tendulkar and Ponting aside from the flashes in the pan. That’s what makes LeBron James or the Williams sisters great. Looking and surviving at your absolute peak for twenty requires an entirely different kind of talent than hitting six at fifteen.

The beautiful truth of the game is hidden somewhere between the boy from Bihar and the Superman of Collingwood.

there is one layer of greatness That which cannot be trained and brought into existence – Bradman’s eye, Tendulkar’s timing, Suryavanshi’s innate power. But that gift means nothing if it is not ultimately connected to the painstaking, patient architecture of a craft. The best people in business accept gifts, but they refuse to trust them.

At the moment, the global game is seeing both ends of that intriguing spectrum. In Melbourne, a 38-year-old man has overcome an entire generation through his work ethic and willpower. And in India, a 15-year-old kid is playing cricket like he was sent from another planet.

Both are undeniably talented. But as Justin Langer watched a teenager tear the cricket world apart on Wednesday night, it left us with a final question to ponder:

Which version of talent inspires you more – the gift, or the craft?

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Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Rajat Patidar. (ANI photo)

Bengaluru: From being one of Royal Challengers Bangalore’s most reliable finishers to becoming a key figure in the backroom setup of the defending IPL champions, Dinesh Karthik has followed the development of the franchise closely.In a freewheeling interview with TOI, the 40-year-old RCB mentor and batting coach talked about the emergence of the captain, the champion mentality within the team. Rajat Patidar As a calm leader, and coaching international stars. Part:Mentality of the team defending the titleAt the beginning, each player was given a structure explaining what they should do. In terms of results, there were going to be ups and downs, so the main thing was to make sure that the things we were good at we did very well and the things we could have done better. We’re constantly focusing on it and getting better at it and it’s a good way to look at this tournament. It is a long tournament and it is important to stay fresh.Patidar’s evolution as a captainIt was heartening to see him remain the same person: cool, calm and relaxed on and off the field. As a leader, he has handled the pressure well without showing it, which is commendable.He is still the same person he was before becoming captain, which says a lot about him. I have played with him and I have a good relationship. Seeing him succeed as both a batsman and captain makes me feel very proud.coming of age Devdutt PadikkalHe was always an exceptional batsman for Karnataka and across all formats. But in the IPL, I think he wanted to change some areas of his game, which he addressed immediately, and we as a group were quite happy to help and you can see the results on the field, the confidence and the way he is batting. It’s always a good sign when a young guy like him understands what it takes to take his game to the next level and he asks for suggestions and opinions, but he does it in his own way. He is a strong man. I believe he is a fantastic talent and it is great to see that talent become something very special to the team.On the difference between coaching Indian and international playersYou have to adjust to international players in a different way. For example, Tim David is very different from Romario Shepherd, so you need to understand both of them and where they are coming from. They are very independent people, so you have to see what works for them, and sometimes less can be more, and I try to say very little if I don’t need to interact too much. I’ve learned a lot from Andy (Flowers) and Mo (Bobutt) about how they handle different players and their character traits. They are very different from what I have had with Indian players, but full of respect.On being named among the best coaches by Phil SaltPhil has obviously traveled the world and worked with many coaches. It was nice to see him admit that what I said helped him. My role was to understand what Phil was doing and help him raise his game. He was willing to discuss areas for improvement, which empowered me to provide useful feedback. Such open relationships with foreign players are always beneficial. Your interactions with the players on the bench. Being in the top 11 or 12 of the IPL doesn’t define you as a player. It’s all about team combination; If you’re not into it, it doesn’t make you less valuable. Avoid thinking too much about your selection situation.On preparing finishersThe role of finisher is a specific role. It is difficult because you do not have to face as many balls as the top-order batsmen. Therefore, you have to understand what it means to perform well and accept some of the ways you can get the best out of it. It is very important to be a good finisher because in most of the innings you play, you are taking a lot of risk. So you have to be very aware of what success means, being a finisher and how confusing failures can really be sometimes. The challenge is to understand and treat both of them equally. Also, the way you practice and prepare for the game is extremely important.

Mumbai: This is an indication of where things have reached in Indian cricket. Siddhesh Lad is an experienced first-class player. The 34-year-old Mumbai batsman, who has long been known as his team’s ‘crisis man’, made his first-class debut almost 12 years ago in November 2013, and has scored 5623 runs in 82 matches at 44.27@15 with 15 centuries and 30 fifties. Lad scored five centuries – he was the top run-scorer for Mumbai in the 2025–26 Ranji Trophy season with 77.40@774 runs in eight matches. However, the consistent domestic cricket batsman has now lost faith in the Ranji Trophy, from where the national selectors pick India’s potential players.Speaking to TOI on the sidelines of the jersey launch event of T20 Mumbai League defending champions Mumbai South Central Maratha Royals on Thursday, Lad said he firmly believes that it is the performance in the IPL that is considered the only criteria for selection. Season 4 of the T20 Mumbai League starts from Monday at the Wankhede Stadium.Citing the example of Jammu and Kashmir fast bowler Aaqib Nabi, who was the leading wicket-taker in the Ranji Trophy last season with 60 wickets at an average of 12.56 in 10 matches and who helped his team win its maiden title last season, was ignored for the one-off Test against Afghanistan, Lad told this paper, “I think you are 100% right when you say that doing well in the IPL will be a huge boost for the Indian team. The harsh reality is that domestic cricket performance is ignored by the national selectors. Ranji Trophy has been devalued. I will not deny it. I am not saying that I have performed well, so pick me in the Indian team, but I think someone like Auqib Nabi, if he has worked so hard and single-handedly won the Ranji Trophy for Jammu and Kashmir, which is not so easy, has performed exceptionally well in the Ranji Trophy, then he deserves to be selected in the India Test team.Explaining his point further, Lad said, “I mean, IPL players also know how difficult it is to play the entire (Ranji Trophy) season and maintain their fitness. However, nowadays, if you do not perform well in the IPL, or you do not have a good season in the IPL, then your chances of getting into the Indian Test team are less. If you do not play in the IPL, it is difficult for you to move forward (in your career).”Nabi took 44 wickets @ 13.27 in the 2024-25 Ranji Trophy season. Putting into words the bitter truth of Indian cricket, Lad said, “You are giving the wrong message to domestic cricketers that even if you perform well in the Ranji Trophy, it doesn’t make any difference to your cricket career, but if you perform well in a few matches in the IPL, you can make a place in India’s Test team. In the beginning, everyone says, ‘If you perform in the Ranji Trophy, you will play for India, if you don’t perform then you won’t. Will play. But in the end, when we actually see the selection, a lot of things go wrong.In that kind of scenario, would he advise the promising youngsters of the Maratha Royals team to focus on playing and performing well in the T20 Mumbai League and IPL instead of trying to make it to the Mumbai Ranji Trophy team?

“Definitely, I would say so. I wouldn’t deny that if you see that you can play for India after just one season of IPL, something you can’t possibly do after playing Ranji Trophy for a decade, then it means we can’t ask players to focus only on Ranji Trophy. If the player is playing well in the T20 Mumbai League, there is a shortcut for him to play in the IPL later and make a place in the Indian team,” Lad said, adding that it is matter of fact.Being associated with domestic cricket, Lad is hurt by the way things are shaping up in Indian cricket at present. “I have seen many players who have performed exceptionally well in the Ranji Trophy. However, just because they did not get that opportunity in the IPL, they did not get a chance to make the Indian Test team,” Lad lamented.Meanwhile, Lad and Maratha Royals head coach Amit Dani welcomed the availability of Mumbai and Rajasthan Royals fast bowler Tushar Deshpande for Maratha Royals this time, who did not play last season.

Ambati Rayudu has advised Yashasvi Jaiswal to leave Rajasthan Royals to get out of the shadow of Vaibhav Suryavanshi. Jaiswal has been with RR since 2020 and has played 82 matches and scored 2592 runs.

However, this season sees Jaiswal playing second fiddle to Suryavanshi. Who has scored 680 runs and is currently the Orange Cap holder. Jaiswal has scored 426 runs in 15 matches and has captained the Royals on two occasions. But his season has been marred by inconsistency at the top.

Even during the eliminator win against SRH, Jaiswal scored 29 runs off 29 balls. On the other hand, Suryavanshi got 97 runs in the same number of deliveries.

Rayudu said that Jaiswal cannot dominate Suryavanshi all the time and he can be a match-winner in any other team.

Rayudu said that Suryavanshi will continue to overshadow other players and will need a senior partner who will not compete with her.

“He needs to change his team. Because he can’t just bat with that guy and dominate him every time. He is a star in himself. If he goes to another team, he will win matches on his own. He needs that place and that platform. Because this guy will keep dominating people, he needs to have a senior partner who can deal with that and be happy for him. Be happy for what is happening and not compete with the non-striker. Do it,” he said on ESPN Cricinfo.

Which team can Jaiswal go to?

If Jaiswal goes into the auction pool, there will be many suitors in line for him. However, Rayudu feels that Mumbai Indians would be a good fit for the Indian opener.

Rayudu said, “Mumbai Indians is a good team for Jaiswal.”

MI would be a good fit for Jaiswal as Rohit Sharma is reaching the final stages of his career.

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