Rajasthan Royals’ Director of Cricket Kumar Sangakkara has shared his first impression of young batting talent Vaibhav Suryavanshi. He also recalled that the sound off the bat of him felt like a gunshot and that he made things look extremely easy as well.

Suryavanshi, 14, was bought for ₹1.1 crore by the Royals ahead of IPL 2025. He scored a century off only 38 deliveries against the Gujarat Titans. Having scored 252 runs in 7 matches and got the Super Striker of the Season award due to a strike rate of 206.55 as well.

READ HERE: “The reality is I was tired” – Jasprit Bumrah on not celebrating five-fer

In a video shared by Sky Sports, Sangakkara said, “Vaibhav Suryavanshi has already shown himself to be a special talent. In 2023, one of the Rajasthan Royals analysts sent through a text, saying, there’s a very special player to watch, get to trials and look to sign. The first time I saw him live, we had signed him was after we signed him apart from watching some videos of him batting. It was in the nets in Guwahati. Batting against Jofra Archer and the other seamers we had, he made it look very, very easy. He had a lot of time, the sound off his bat was like a gun shot, every single time he made contact with the ball.”

“His bat swing is lovely. It’s nice and wide outside off-stump and it’s very free-flowing. He has got a lot of time and his movements are very, very simple and minimal. He’s also very enthusiastic about developing his shot repertoire. He has all the shots you can want in a T20 batter. This is just the start for him and he’ll become even better and hopefully, very, very special,” Kumar Sangakkara concluded.