The U-19 World Cup is a day away, and all eyes will be on Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Ayush Mhatre, not to forget Deepesh Devendran. But the question to ask is: how important is winning the U-19 World Cup? While a World Cup will forever be special, and the men would do well to follow what the women achieved under Shafali, there are bigger questions when it comes to under-19 cricket.
What I am also interested in is how many of these players will eventually transition to the senior level, and how long it actually takes to do so. In the side led by Prithvi Shaw with Shubman Gill as vice-captain, the latter has gone on to captain India. Shaw is still struggling to make a comeback. Abhishek Sharma, who was part of that team in 2018, flowered into his current avatar only in 2024–25. In essence, it took him six years to do so. Most of the other players from that team haven’t really made the cut.
A deeper dive shows a very similar story in some of the other teams. While Yashasvi Jaiswal has made the cut and is doing well, Ravi Bishnoi hasn’t improved as much as most people thought he would. Avesh Khan and Kartik Tyagi, who showed great promise at the U-19 level, are still not national team regulars.
My point is that the gap between the U-19 and senior level is quite steep. Most fail to make the cut, and it is the same story in almost every sport. In football, the India U-17 team has done reasonably well at times, but by the time players reach the senior level, things are very different. In badminton and tennis too, the story is similar.
That’s why, while watching the U-19 World Cup and supporting Vaibhav and Ayush, I’ll be keen to see how these boys deal with pressure, how they handle expectations, and how they conduct themselves on the field. While some of them are already stars thanks to the IPL, making it big at the international level takes a different kind of mettle. Vaibhav, for example, has enormous talent. Whether he can deliver under pressure will determine how he transitions to the senior level.
Coming to India’s bowling, it does look a bit over-dependent on Deepesh. India lost the warm-up game against England by 20 runs and could feel some pressure going into the first game of the tournament, with rain forecast as well.
Take Bangladesh as an example. Bangladesh won the World Cup a few years back, beating India led by Jaiswal. But have they done anything stellar at the senior level since? Are they in the top bracket of world cricket, and have those U-19 players really made a mark at the senior level?
This is an interesting tournament. While winning it is important, becoming better players in the process is perhaps just as vital. That’s what Vaibhav, Ayush, and the others will be aiming for over the next few weeks, with the country keeping a close eye on the action.
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