Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the 15-year-old teen sensation, set the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 ablaze, finishing with 776 runs in 16 matches. With every knock he played in IPL 2026, the clamour around his potential debut in Indian cricket team grew louder and louder.
What Shekhar said
Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur has now highlighed the talent of the young cricketer. Taking to X, he wrote, “If sooryavanshi wasn’t such a sensational cricketer.. I could have cast him in Masoom the film.”
Vaibhav made his debut in April 2025 at 14 years and 23 days old, breaking the record to become the youngest debutant in IPL history.
For the unversed, Shekhar Kapur’s Masoom is a cult Hindi film which released in the year 1983. It marked his directorial debut. The film is an adaptation of the 1980 Erich Segal novel Man, Woman and Child. The film also stars Naseeruddin Shah, Shaban Azmi, Saeed Jaffrey, Tanuja and Supriya Pathak among others. It features Urmila Matondkar, Aradhana and Jugal Hansraj in their debuts as child actors.
A few days ago, a contemporary reimagining of the film was announced. Directed by Kapur, the film is set to explore themes of identity, family, love and migration through a modern lens while retaining the emotional core of the original.
“For a long time, I’ve felt that the themes of Masoom deserved to be revisited through the lens of today’s world. Families, relationships, identity; these ideas have evolved so much, and cinema must evolve with them. AR Rahman has always had the rare ability to create music that speaks directly to the soul of a story and its audience. Having him as both composer and creative partner on this journey makes it even more meaningful,” Kapur said in a statement.
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Meanwhile, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has been included the 30-member probables list for the upcoming Asian Games. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has already submitted the list to the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) for the Games set to be played in Aichi-Nagoya from September 19 to October 4.
Moreover, Sachin Tendulkar has admitted he would like to see Sooryavanshi play Test cricket. Speaking at the Cricinfo Honours in Mumbai on Saturday, he said, “He’s kind of a player who looks very confident, very, very sure of what he wants to do and I would not want to play around with his natural instincts. The way he sees the ball and the way he responds to that, if that signal is interrupted — if you put a lot of hurdles in between that by telling him multiple things — that’s where the real challenge would be. I would give him the freedom to go out and bat the way he does. Along with time, he will learn to deal with other challenges of the game.”