Lucknow Super Giants head coach Justin Langer has admitted that he’s still pinching himself over a moment involving 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. After the teenager’s match against RR, Langer asked for a quick selfie—something he says he has only done on two occasions in his entire sporting life.
Quick facts
- Justin Langer requested a selfie with Vaibhav Sooryavanshi after the RR vs LSG game.
- Sooryavanshi is 15 years old.
- Langer says he has asked athletes for selfies only twice in his life.
- The previous selfie request was two years earlier at Perth’s Optus Stadium with AFL legend Stephen Michael.
- Langer posted about Sooryavanshi on LinkedIn the day after the record-breaking milestone.
- Langer referenced Sooryavanshi’s 53 sixes in the IPL season.
- Langer noted Sooryavanshi is the youngest centurion in men’s T20 cricket.
- Langer said Sooryavanshi “did it again” in the playoff final.
In his own words, the exchange was simple: after Sooryavanshi tore through LSG, coached by the former Australia opener, the coach asked the youngster for a selfie. The teenager agreed without fuss, and Langer framed the snapshot as something he could value for the long term.
That reaction makes more sense when Langer describes his rarity. He said it was only the second time he had ever asked an athlete for a selfie. The first time, he recalled, came about two years earlier in Perth at the multi-purpose Optus Stadium, when he found himself sharing a frame with his childhood idol, Stephen Michael—an AFL legend associated with South Fremantle.
Just a day after Sooryavanshi struck Chris Gayle’s long-standing benchmark for the most sixes in a single IPL season, Langer poured his admiration into a lengthy LinkedIn post. He couldn’t contain his excitement about the way the teenager has been going about his cricket, highlighting the scale of the power and the maturity in his batting.
“Last week I did something I have only done twice in my life,” Langer wrote. He explained that the earlier selfie was with Stephen Michael at Optus Stadium, and that the second was with the 15-year-old from a village in Bihar—after Sooryavanshi had punished LSG all over the ground.
Langer then laid out the numbers and milestones that have defined Sooryavanshi’s season. He pointed out that the youngster has already struck 53 sixes in the IPL campaign—described as the second-highest tally by any batter in any T20 tournament across history, trailing only Chris Gayle. He also underlined that Sooryavanshi is the youngest centurion in men’s T20 cricket, and he stressed again that the prodigy is just 15.
After 35 years in the game, Langer said he still can’t believe what he’s seeing. In his view, the way Sooryavanshi plays is unlike anything he has witnessed before, and he suggested that the talent level on show is being underestimated simply because people use the word “talent” so casually.
He added that the youngster didn’t just deliver once—he “did it again” during the playoff final. Langer’s message, threaded through the post, was that Sooryavanshi’s ability isn’t a flash in the pan; it’s a repeatable skill that keeps showing up when the pressure rises.
In the same LinkedIn update, Langer drew a sporting comparison to Scott Pendlebury, another Australian footballing icon. Pendlebury became the most-capped player in the tournament’s history last week with 433 appearances, and Langer used the parallel to stress how both athletes are dominating their respective sports even though they sit at opposite ends of their careers.
