Who should sacrifice opening spot for Vaibhav Sooryavanshi? Sunil Gavaskar picks between Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma

In a series of big events, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has managed to secure a place in India's squad for the upcoming T20I series against Ireland and England on Saturday, June 6. Amid this, former India legend Sunil Gavaskar has expressed his opinion on the selection of the 15-year-old opener after enjoying an extraordinary individual campaign in IPL 2026 while playing for Rajasthan Royals (RR).

Gavaskar backs Sooryavanshi to open innings vs Ireland

With this, Sooryavanshi became the youngest Indian player to get a national call-up. In an exclusive interaction with India Today, Sunil Gavaskar expressed that he wants to see Vaibhav play in the Indian jersey in the series against Ireland ahead of established openers like Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma.

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"I’ll pick him for the Ireland T20Is for sure. I’d like to see him play in the Ireland T20Is. Give him a chance ahead of, say, maybe Sanju Samson or Abhishek Sharma. Maybe in one match, Abhishek Sharma is left out. In another match, Sanju Samson was left out," said Gavaskar.

Gavaskar believes that a low-stake series against Ireland should be the proper platform for the Indian side to experiment their youngest player ever at the international level.

“Well, it was expected, wasn’t it? Look at the form that he was in. Look at the number of runs that he scored. How could you leave him out of the squad after that? You’ve got to reward performance, and I think that’s what they’ve done," added Gavaskar.

Despite urging the Indian team to give proper playing chances to Vaibhav, the former India Test opener noted that being in the dressing room would be a big learning experience for him.

“Whether he gets to play matches, we’ll have to wait and see. But whatever it is, for him to be in that Indian dressing room will be a great learning experience as well, which will serve him in good stead as his career takes off," claimed Gavaskar.

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi IPL 2026 stats

The 15-year-old opener enjoyed a historic individual campaign with the bat, amassing 776 runs in just 16 innings at an average of 48.50 with a humongous strike rate of 237.30. Vaibhav managed to hit one century and five half-centuries throughout the competition.

During his campaign, Vaibhav broke various records and one of them was Chris Gayle's long-standing record of hitting the most number of sixes in a single season. In IPL 2012, Gayle smashed 59 sixes and Vaibhav demolished the record by hitting a total of 72 sixes. Notably, this is also the most number of sixes smashed by any Indian batter in the history of the tournament.