New Delhi: RR’s Vaibhav Suryavanshi celebrates his fifty runs during the IPL 2025 cricket match between Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, in New Delhi. (PTI Photo/Manvender Vashist Lav)

Legendary India off-spinner R Ashwin showered praise on 14-year-old batting prodigy Vaibhav Suryavanshi and revealed an interesting conversation between England cricketers Jos Buttler and Jofra Archer during an Indian Premier League (IPL) match.Suryavanshi caught everyone’s attention after Rajasthan Royals bought him for ₹1.1 crore at the IPL mega auction. In IPL 2025, he played seven games, scoring 252 runs at an average of 36 and a strike rate of 206.56.“I’ll tell you a small story. After that RR versus CSK game in Delhi… it’s not so much about his hitting,” Ashwin told Sanju Samson in a chat on his YouTube channel. “I bowled one ball from around the stumps — he played it to cover. The next ball, I bowled slower. You’ve kept wickets for me for a long time, so I wanted to see where he would go. He just waited for that ball.”“Then he just creamed it through mid-on for a single. I was like, ‘What the hell, man? Where has this guy come from?’“And he’s 14 years old. I made my IPL debut 18 years ago — he was still in his parents’ imagination back then. It’s quite crazy. I saw Jos Buttler talking to Jofra about it, asking him, ‘How did it feel to get smashed by a 14-year-old in the nets?’”

Rajasthan Royals captain Sanju Samson also heaped praise on Suryavanshi.“The young boy who is smashing it all around the park for Rajasthan Royals — Vaibhav Suryavanshi,” Sanju said, recalling his first impression of the teenager.

“When he hit the first ball for six, I thought, ‘That’s cool, he lucked out.’ But then he just kept going. The quality of shots he was hitting really shocked me,” he added.