Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's India debut: Is batting coach Sitanshu Kotak hinting at a longer wait?

India’s upcoming T20I series against Ireland has drawn unusual levels of attention. Though this is India's fourth T20I bilateral visit in Ireland, never before has there been such buzz, and it all revolves around one name: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.

The 15-year-old prodigy earned his call-up on the back of a sensational IPL 2026 campaign with Rajasthan Royals. He piled up 776 runs, clinched the Orange Cap, and swept both the MVP and Emerging Player of the Season awards, becoming the first player in the tournament’s 19-year history to achieve that treble.

Naturally, fans are eager to see him don the India jersey for the first time. But batting coach Sitanshu Kotak has hinted that Sooryavanshi’s debut may not be immediate.

“I am sure that he will get his dues and his opportunities,” Kotak said on the eve of the series opener. “So I don’t think that just to give him an opportunity, we should drop someone who has already been scoring runs. That also won’t be right.

Obviously, it depends on the team management… what we plan to do in this match. That is a different thing. But I think it is a very thin line between trying to give somebody an opportunity and you being unfair to some other player.”

Kotak’s words underline India’s problem of plenty. Sooryavanshi is an opener, but the current pairing of Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma is built on performance. Samson was Player of the Tournament in India’s victorious T20 World Cup campaign, while Abhishek sits atop the ICC T20I batting rankings.

Slotting Sooryavanshi at No. 3 isn’t straightforward either. Ishan Kishan has made that spot his own after a stellar World Cup, where he was India’s second-highest run-scorer with 317 runs at a strike rate of 193.29, including three fifties. Kishan is now ranked No. 2 in the ICC T20I batting charts, just behind Abhishek.