"Dil mein basta hai Sooryavanshi" ("Sooryavanshi lives in our hearts")

Two fans of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, trying to find their entry gate outside the New Chandigarh stadium, beamed a smile when asked where they were from. "Bihar," they sang in unison, saying that he resides in their hearts. Metres away, a street vendor was sorting through his sack of duplicate kits, but the ask from the buyers was clear: "Sooryavanshi hai?" ("Do you have a Sooryavanshi one?"). If you looked around, pink and blue kits with the No.3 were in abundance, adorned by barely-off-the-ground toddlers and full-grown adults alike.

How do we find ourselves in this new order? Why is a 15-year-old rewiring the IPL in the way it's played, consumed and celebrated?

Let's stop with this act of surprise. Sooryavanshi probably doesn't care how shocked the world says it is. Why would he, when he doesn't seem to care about a World Cup-winning great at his delivery mark, about to be paraded through a 25-run over.

Maybe, our thinking has been constricted. Perhaps, India's obsession with age, tradition and comparison makes us look at Sooryavanshi through a certain lens. We've told ourselves fifteen is too young. A new player should respect experienced hands. Be in your limits, or the game will humble you. Rein it in for a knockout game.

Well, Sooryavanshi did not.

For a lesser mortal in his shoes, the New Chandigarh game would have been a nerve-wracking affair. A Playoff match. Opening the batting in a must-win game. The burden of RR's skewed record against SRH. The growing voices outside, discussing a potential India call-up. Yada yada yada.

Without a visible shred of nerves, Sooryavanshi, in his first act of the evening, sent Cummins packing: outskilled and outwitted. Cummins, curiously opting to bowl first, came with the idea of curbing his batswing early with full balls angled on his legs. To that effect, Cummins put two fielders on the leg-side ropes.

But Sooryavanshi was in no mood to engage in tactical warfare. First over, sixth ball, he hammered a full ball over Cummins's head. Here's to your plan, he probably muttered. Eshan Malinga was the next victim: playing Good Cop, Bad Cop, he instead decided to direct a bouncer at Sooryavanshi. The stunt did not work either: it went flying over long leg.

Then came the 25-run over, that will singe Cummins for a while. Changing fields almost every ball did not help. Sooryavanshi hammered a hit down the ground, and then punished the course-correction, upper-cutting a six by using his pace. Done with his experiment, Cummins brought in the extra leg-side fielder, and proceeded to pack the off side behind square instead. A deep cover was installed to check upon his inside-out cravings. Sooryavanshi couldn't care less, slapping the next one exactly over Cummins's head.

Running out of options, he kept mid-off very, very straight. The idea was to not let him punch full balls down the ground. But it was no good. Out of his 97 runs, 37 came between the long-off and long-on region.

The young boy wasn't the one sweating. For someone usually so suave he could be the next James Bond, Cummins was left wiping his forehead, reactively changing fields every ball. First Travis Head, then Heinrich Klaasen, later Abhishek Sharma: all walked up with advice. Cummins was in charge but out of options.

At one point, during a ten-ball sequence, Sooryavanshi hit six sixes. As Powerplay ended, he was 60 off 20. The next nine balls gave him 37 more. Eventually, those runs settled the game.

There's no one with a greater mastery of six-hitting at the moment. His balls/six ratio, at 4.3, is better than anyone in IPL history. It's better than Chris Gayle, the paragon of skyexchange agent. Bettering Gayle in T20s is the ultimate reputation-buster.

Being the youngest boy on the circuit, probably explains why reputations don't matter to Sooryavanshi. Everyone's elder, which probably also puts them all at the same level in his eyes. Being young doesn't intimidate him, it frees him up from the pressures of being too serious, too proper, too hardcoded into the system. He is a free bird, but in his own bubble.

But even as a boy among grownups, he keeps the weight of his voice. The training wheels are also slowly being removed. After his near-century, he wasn't subbed out, but stayed back to be an active part of the game. Sooryavanshi was far from a silent spectator: he walked back with Brijesh Sharma, arms around his shoulder, passing on advice. He got into a playful exchange with umpire Adrian Holdstock after the seventh wicket fell. He shifted fielders and counter-questioned Riyan Parag. All the big boy stuff, but with the lightness of a 15-year-old being.

Sooryavanshi's biggest strength is not over-analysing anything. "We don't have conversations, we just leave him alone," Riyan Parag said after the game. "I have no idea what's going on in his head," Vikram Rathour admitted during his innings. "The best thing about Vaibhav is that he doesn't plan anything," Dhruv Jurel later said.

By now, all early doubts have vapourised. It's now a more comfortable acceptance that Sooryavanshi operates differently, not limited by existing societal constructs. Neither in age, nor reputation, and certainly not in skill.

On Wednesday, he fell three short of a magical, record-tumbling ton. Jaiswal had his hand on his head, and sat on his knees as Sooryavanshi stood motionless, refusing to go. Only the tap of the fielders pushed him back into his senses, before his slow trudge to the dugout began.

The walk might have felt long, but the journey is still just beginning. In two years, Sooryavanshi has seeped into the IPL's upper echelons. He could go another quarter of a century, residing in hearts and breaking reputations.

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