Justin Langer has been around the 22 yards for a while. Three decades and a half, in fact.
He has played with, against and watched some of the greatest batters of our time. Yet, he is still awed by Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s batting. The former Australian opener, who played 105 Tests, feels the teenager is scary for world cricket.
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“I have seen some amazing players in 35 years of cricket,” the Lucknow Super Giants coach said shortly after Sooryavanshi scored a match-winning 93 off 38 for Rajasthan Royals at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium on Tuesday night. “To see a young man bat like that, not just tonight but throughout the series, is breathtaking.”
He is impressed by the way he treats formidable bowlers like Mitchell Starc and Anrich Nortje. “As an ex-batter, knowing how hard batting is, I think, ‘what is going on here?’” Langer said. “The bowlers are thinking, ‘what on earth is going on here?’”
“It is incredible actually to be able to play that way, there is high risk to it, and now he has the orange cap. He is doing it in every form of the game and scoring a lot of runs. Ultimately that is what the game is about.”
He said the scary thing was the future. “The best way to learn how to make runs is to make runs, not by hitting some big sixes,” Langer said. “The scary thing going forward, if the expressions on the faces of Starc and Nortje and every bowler tell a story now, what about when he learns how to bat?”
Published on May 20, 2026