Before Vaibhav Sooryavanshi: Who Was the Last Teenager to Play for India?

The arrival of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in Indian senior cricket has sent fans and historians reaching back through the record books, asking a simple but fascinating question: who was the last teenager to wear the India jersey before him?

Teenage debutants at the senior international level are genuinely rare in Indian cricket, given the fierce competition for places and the long domestic pipeline players must typically navigate. The fact that Sooryavanshi has broken through so young places him in a select historical bracket, alongside names that have become legends of the game.

The Times of India's deep-dive into this question highlights just how extraordinary early international selection is in a country with one of the most competitive domestic cricket ecosystems in the world. For every Sooryavanshi who makes it at seventeen or younger, there are hundreds of talented youngsters who wait years for their opportunity.

For Indian fans, Sooryavanshi represents the latest in a storied tradition of prodigious talent emerging from the country's vast cricketing heartland. Whether he can sustain and build on his early promise — as some teenage debutants have and others have not — remains the real story to follow. For now, cricket India is captivated.