New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner conceded that Vaibhav Sooryavanshi would be “quite hard to stop” if he plays for India in the five-match T20 International series beginning here on Thursday, but his team has some plans to deal with the young batting sensation.
Sooryavanshi has been used sparingly since being picked for the tour of UK earlier this year, largely because regular openers Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson have done the job quite well. Santner said should the 15-year-old make the playing XI in the series here, some research has been done to figure out his game.
“He (Sooryavanshi) did not play in the last series (against West Indies), but we know how good he is, in IPL. We know other players like Abhishek are doing very well. But he (Sooryavanshi) has a huge part to play for India, whether it’s in this series or not, but in future,” Santner said at the pre-series press conference here on Wednesday.
“If he does get a crack at this series, we’ve seen what he can do and guys have found it quite hard to stop him. I know in England, they went quite short and hard at a lot of the Indian batters. I think we’ve seen him in the IPL and how aggressive he can be. So we’ve got some plans for him if he happens to play.”
Santner was also asked about the return of veteran pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the Indian T20I team after a nearly four-year absence. The home skipper said he expects Bhuvneshwar to love the conditions here.