There’s seemingly nothing Vaibhav Sooryavanshi can’t do.

The 15-year-old Rajasthan Royals sensation is now the fastest player in history to reach 400 runs in a single Indian Premier League season – off just 167 balls.

And while it’s led to the inevitable calls for him to make his international debut for India this year, I personally wouldn’t be rushing him.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t good enough. Clearly, he has something special. A 15-year-old sitting near the top of the IPL run charts and blasting 43 off 16 balls is ridiculous talent, and the fact he has already gone past 400 runs this season shows this isn’t just one lucky cameo.

But international cricket, especially Test cricket, is a different beast.

The modern game probably says pick him, at least in the white-ball formats. The hype machine definitely says pick him. But I’d still want to see him spend more time in the middle, learn different situations, learn failure, and build a game that works when conditions aren’t flat, the ball isn’t flying, and the bowlers aren’t just trying to survive.

We’ve seen this kind of excitement before. In Australia there was huge noise around Sam Konstas and Jake Fraser-McGurk. Both were clearly talented and exciting and had success at domestic level. But white-ball hitting when the odds are in your favour and international cricket are not the same thing.

With Sooryavanshi, the danger is not the skill. The danger is the weight. If you debut for India at 15 or 16, you aren’t just playing cricket. You’re carrying the expectations of a country of more than a billion people.

When a young athlete is pushed into the spotlight early, the world only sees the upside.

When it’s going well, they’ll call you the king. When it stops going well, and it always does at some point, the same noise can turn pretty quickly.

That’s the part young athletes aren’t always ready for. And it’s not their fault, most of us weren’t ready for much at 15. I wasn’t even close. I was immature, as most of us were.

So when a kid that age has crowds chanting his name, cameras in his face, sponsors circling, and people comparing him to legends, you have to ask how he handles the other side of it. The first failure. The first technical weakness exposed. The first headline saying he isn’t ready. That can make or break a young player.

There are examples in other sports of teenagers doing incredible things. Nadia Comaneci. Pele. Martina Hingis. Boris Becker. Ian Thorpe.

Cricket has had young Test debutants too, including Sachin Tendulkar at 16 and Pakistan’s Hasan Raza even younger at 14.

But cricket feels different. Careers can last a long time, and the game asks different questions over different formats.

If I was guessing now, I’d say he looks more like a white-ball star first. Whether he becomes a long-term Test batsman will depend on whether he wants that grind, not just whether he has the talent.

It’s not just speed, power or instinct. Test cricket asks for patience, emotional control, technique, concentration, and the ability to come back after being worked out. It can take a bit more time and that’s not a bad thing.

Test cricket, in particular, isn’t built for shortcuts. It exposes everything, not just your technique but your mindset. And that’s where the real concern sits for me, not skill, but the mental side.

When a young athlete is pushed into the spotlight early, the world only sees the upside. The runs, the highlights, the hype.

What we don’t see is how they’re being prepared for everything that comes with it. The expectation, the noise, the criticism when it doesn’t go well. Because at some point, it won’t.

Many elite athletes who start young don’t just deal with pressure of the whole circus, they carry it long after their careers. And when everything has been built around performance from such a young age, the emotional side can catch up later.

That’s why decisions like this can’t just be about what a player is doing on the field right now. It has to be about the bigger picture. And the person, not just the player.

Because while some young athletes thrive early, we’ve also seen the other side — the drop-offs, the burnout, the struggles that don’t always show up until years later.

If India genuinely believes picking Sooryavanshi strengthens their side, then fair enough. And I’d be happy to be proved wrong. That’s the beauty of selection — there is no perfect answer.

Some sports are built for youth. International cricket still asks for something deeper.