Where is the next Vaibhav Sooryavanshi?

Although Aditya has no particular interest in cricket, he has figured out that his son has a pretty decent bat swing, and a sense of timing with the ball. He now wants to enroll him in a cricket academy. The reasons for this decision are varied, with physical exercise, skill development, and providing a safe environment while the parents are at work, just a few among them.

More significantly, as a parent concerned about his child's future, he is placing his bet on cricket as being a productive pursuit for the long-term professional success of his kid. He is convinced about the plan. After all, even for someone who doesn't watch cricket, the story of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's exploits and the back story of his early start in the sport have been screaming in his face, via Instagram and other mediums.

Any attempts to dissuade him, to let the kid just play with other kids his age, are not entertained. To reinforce his beliefs, one argument he makes is: "who is coming down to play any more?" The rest of his friends who have kids of similar age have already enrolled their children in academies, he claims. The only confusion he has around this is: why have his friends enrolled their kids in different sports instead of just one - wouldn't it confuse the child?

Within the socio-economic world he lives in, he isn't an outlier. Even outside of it, he isn't an anomaly. Whether in metro cities, tier-II towns or rural India, it is becoming a growing trend to enroll kids in cricket academies at a very young age in order to make them a professional in that sport. The only aspect that differs in the economic groups is motivation.

For many in the lower and middle socio-economic strata - which is most of the country - success in sports is a pathway for economic stability through a government job or social mobility. For higher income groups in urban India, however, the motivations can be wide ranging - from an unmet wish that they held to become a cricketer, to creating an ambitious pathway for their children. "Sometimes, the parents themselves become victims of peer pressure," observes Kalna Shukla, an Ahmedabad-based sports psychologist.

Irrespective, the success of teenage wonders in Indian cricket is supercharging this movement. A few days before Sooryavanshi's IPL debut, 17-year-old Ayush Mhatre stole the limelight playing for Chennai Super Kings. Videos of his days playing cricket as a six-year-old in the maidaans of Mumbai surfaced on social media within a few hours. The Indian women's team is filled with players who made their international debuts as teenagers - Shafali Verma, Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh, Jemimah Rodrigues and many others. The critical caveat with the women players is that they didn't enter formal training and competitions early.

Also complementing the romantic tales of teenage wonders are stories of sacrifice and single-minded dedication from parents - in films or in real life. Whether it's of Mhatre, Sooryavanshi, or just about any cricketer who cracks the IPL, a neatly packaged idea has been sold to many. The profile pieces that accompany the arrival of each new star tend to involve a tale of family sacrifice, and quotes from an academy coach who helped to shape them. With this narrative of what it takes to build a successful cricketer, parents are increasingly going to academies and taking daily, detailed updates about their kid from the coaches, much to the latter's dismay.

The rising involvement of private investors in Indian cricket also feeds this demand for the next ultra-young talent. Since Sooryavanshi's success, at least one north India-based IPL franchise is already actively hunting for its young genius. Sooryavanshi's name has become the buzzword of that hunt, and possibly for the team's long-term brand growth.

Of course this is not purely a Sooryavanshi-generated phenomenon. Ever since Sachin Tendulkar made his Test debut at the age of 16, the concept of what early success in cricket could bring has expanded. But Tendulkar did so in an era when the eyeballs of the nation, and the flow of financial abundance, did not reach beyond the national team. Since then, the Indian economy has gone through an enormous leap forward, and at the same time its cricket has been turbocharged by the advent of the IPL. With 10 franchise teams offering a platform on which young cricketers can make their name and their fortune - to go with the numerous state-leagues and highly-lucrative tennis-ball tournaments - Sooryavanshi has become the face of a bigger, more accelerated trend that had started more than a decade back. The demand-factory has never been more willing to embrace a teenage wonder, the supply-chain is already flooded, and the conveyor belt is ready to roll out the next superstar.

Chetan Jadhav, the Navi Mumbai-based coach of Abhigyan Kundu who won the Under-19 World Cup for India at the age of 16, claims parents have come to him seeking admission for their kids who are as young as four. The demand, moreover, is not simply to teach the kid to play cricket. It is to turn them into 'Virat Kohli'. Again, Jadhav is not the only one facing such a bizarre request. To see their children turn into the next Tendulkar, Kohli or MS Dhoni - and now, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - is a pan-India phenomenon.

The repeated birth of superstars has meant that many children getting enrolled in cricket face a very peculiar expectation - of excelling instead of learning. When that happens, the activity doesn't remain a hobby or a fun pursuit anymore - like with singing, dancing or painting, for example. It becomes an entry to the world of competitions.

Research into why children play sport has repeatedly found that winning is much less important to them than adults tend to assume. 'Winning' as a motivation has ranked anywhere between 8th to 12th in their priority. Reasons that ranked much higher included 'being with friends', 'having fun', 'to be part of a team' and 'doing something I'm good at'.

So what is the appropriate age for a child to start playing sports? If the child has to succeed later in life, one might assume it's wiser to start young. Shukla insists that it is important to understand why the child has picked up the sport in the first place.

"Interest in any sport for a child usually begins with curiosity - they're simply trying to imitate what people around them are doing," she says. "That interest deepens once they start enjoying the activity or receive some form of validation from it. So it's important to understand why a child chooses to take up a sport. Is it because they want to feel closer to their peers and remain part of the group? Is it their way of spending quality time with their parents? Or is it something they genuinely want to pursue - whether just for fun or with serious intent?"

Various researchers agree that children receive several physiological and psychological benefits from playing sports. Beyond developing motor skills, there is also the development of life skills - it fosters better social interactions, development of relationships, understanding authority and moods etc. Above all else, for many, there is an intrinsic joy in playing sports.

The concerns come in when children are pushed into a competitive environment, where they are burdened with expectations to produce results at a very young age. This is true whether it's in academics or in sports. In doing so, a sense of expectation is often laid on the child, along with a subconscious fear of letting the parent down.

Interestingly, Shukla believes, the burden of this mostly falls on those kids who are compliant. "If the parent sees the kid being a little bit disciplined, a little bit smart, a little bit punctual, and all those good qualities at the beginning, they end up having expectations. It is these expectations from parents that are the starting point of pressures for children. Even if it's not explicitly stated, kids are very good at sensing these emotions from adults and feel that pressure."

These expectations, and the effects they produce, aren't necessarily consistent either. As per a US-based study on Chess, many parents and coaches believe that boys are more likely to be great at chess than girls even when there was no difference in their skills or commitment. This belief was strengthened when adults thought that being good at chess meant you had to be a 'genius'. In those cases, if a girl stopped playing chess, the adults were likely to believe it was because she just wasn't talented enough. But when a boy dropped out, they were less likely to blame his ability.

Termed the 'shifting standards effect', where adults change how they judge people based on gender, even if they don't realise it, it is prevalent in Indian cricket as well - boys who don't do well are expected to work harder, while girls who don't do well are indirectly under pressure to leave the sport.

This pressure to 'do well' is also higher in a country like India with a large population and limited places. Where many other countries see early childhood sport as an opportunity for kids to explore themselves with no expectations, in India it begins with competition - whether in cricket or any other facet of social life. The practices and policies that are implemented in other countries to offer the best chance of developing athletes and people in the long term, often don't get the chance to breathe in a country like India, where parents fear that their kid will be left behind if they aren't pushed into competition early.

As a result of this intensity, the expectations of results from kids often go beyond competitions, so that even practice routines are increasingly being monitored by parents who are looking for a return on investment. "These investments need not always be financial. The mere act of dropping the kids and picking them up from their training centres can seem like an investment of effort, for which they want to see results," Shukla notes.

The frustration that follows when a child is not up to the mark in the sport ends up impacting other facets of life. For many parents who grew up without the kind of financial cushion and access, offering their child a better life - or simply, a life they desired - is a matter of pride. The child is made to realise that soon.

This is not just an Indian phenomenon. Paddy Upton, the mental health conditioning coach who has previously worked with the Indian cricket team and various IPL franchises, has noted something similar in South Africa as well. "70% of the 40 million kids who start playing sports at school quit by the age of 13," Upton writes in his blog. "The two main reasons: coaches or parents - with 36% of kids blaming their parents.

"Winning is an adult agenda. And an ego agenda. Ego wants success to look and feel good and fears failure and looking bad. It's about the parent, not the child... Children tend to make it important only when they notice how important it is to the adults around them... Worse still is when parents make their love and recognition contingent on winning. This (inadvertently) happens when parents get excited and happy when their kid does well - and visibly unhappy when they play badly or lose."

Shukla points out that the kids who decide to leave the sport include those who are talented and have all the necessary physical attributes to do well. But somehow they have found themselves in a world where there is a constant pursuit towards productivity, making every minute count. To be able to learn and develop constantly is a virtuous habit, where staring pointlessly at the sky is a waste of time. The showcase of all that skill development is the parents' Instagram feed.

"For kids to be exploring on their own is very important because otherwise you're just making kids in a factory. And you're not letting their own personality, their own traits develop and build with regards to the kind of environment you're putting them in," Shukla says.

"One of the parents, whose child was 10 years old, started panicking because the kid who would bat one-down was sent to bat at five-down. I'm not sure if it's their own insecurity or if they are running a race on behalf of their own kid. Either way, when you dig further, one common trend you realise is that the kid hasn't taken a day off from his routine. These 10-year-old kids have schedules busier than us, without any breaks or family vacations."

Psychologists have suggested that children shouldn't be pushed into competition before the age of 15 - leaving the focus up until that point on exploration and learning. But when a player like Sooryavanshi goes on to grab headlines and make his international debut at that age, it leaves behind a different message.

The competition and the pressure that accompanies it can be severe. And one of the biggest long-term drawbacks of an early initiation into competition is having an identity crisis.

More than a decade ago, Vishnu Salunkhe (name changed) was enrolled in a cricket academy at the age of four. His talent was evident, and by the age of 10, he was shifted to one of Mumbai's premier schools for cricket. To facilitate his growth as a cricketer, his parents left their home and moved closer to his new school.

Vishnu's academic development soon took a back seat and he started featuring for one of Mumbai's premier clubs. However, at 17, he suffered an injury and missed out on a few months of cricket, before failing to make the cut in Mumbai's Under-19 team. Distraught, and assuming bias by the selectors, he gave up on the sport altogether.

His sporting ambitions weren't the only thing to take a knock though. He cut off from his friends, and became bitter and abusive towards his parents, blaming them for his frustrations to the point where they had to leave the house and let him be alone.

For years, Vishnu's entire mission was charted out - to become an India cricketer. Every sacrifice made by him and his family was towards that pursuit. His friendships and social system were built around his life in cricket, with no time to develop any other interest. Now, without the identity of being or becoming a cricketer, he carries a sense of shame and failure. These days he stays confined inside the house, avoiding social interactions and spending his time playing video games.

This is what psychologists term the side effect of 'athletic identity', which is one of the biggest issues that children face when they specialise in sports. "There are mental health implications to early specialisation," Sanika Divekar, a Mumbai-based sports psychologist, observes. "If you are exposed to a lot of competition early, then there will always be this insecurity - am I being left behind, am I not doing enough, why is my child not producing the same kind of results?

"Identity gets built around the age 8-10, as per all these development models in psychology. That's why having a healthy balance between everything they do is important. By the time the kid reaches young adolescence, their identity is fused to the sport - that I'm a cricketer. Then your self worth is contingent upon that. There is no separate kind of self to fall back on once the sport has to be foregone. Socialising back to non-sporting life needs a lot of help."

Ronda Rousey, one of the greatest women MMA wrestlers, had thoughts of taking her life after she lost a UFC bout for the first time. Sitting in a corner of the medical room after being knocked out by Holly Holm, she thought: "What am I any more if I'm not this?" Her identity had become so intertwined with being an undefeated fighter and champion, that losing it made her consider suicide.

Explaining the phenomenon of abrupt retirements in Indian cricket, Upton says, "One big difference for Indian players is that they put all their eggs in one basket from a very young age. Every moment outside school is cricket, cricket, cricket. They know nothing else and are terrified to leave the only life they know. In other countries, most cricketers who make it to the top play another sport too, or have hobbies, or connect with people outside cricket. They have lives beyond the game. But here, players cling on because everyone else does."

While early specialisation may give a child a chance to break into the big leagues at a young age, this doesn't promise a sustainable career. Divekar has observed that kids who start in competition at a very young age can develop burnout and mental health issues later on in life, even if they have been successful. This has been most evident in the tennis world, where the likes of Martina Hingis, Jennifer Capriarti and Justine Henin all started training by the age of four, reached the summit of their sport in their teens, and succumbed to burnout and injuries in their 20s.

Acknowledging the challenges that came from tennis players specialising very early on in life, both the WTA and ATP have enforced strict age-bound rules and capping for participation in tournaments. Moreover, players under the age of 14 must fulfill educational requirements and compliance courses alongside their athletic training.

At this stage, there are no such guardrails in Indian cricket - or any in the pipeline. But Prashant Shetty, a Mumbai-based coach who encounters parents who want him to convert their eight-year-olds into the next Sachin Tendulkar, feels comfortable shouldering some of the responsibility. "Parents will come with hopes of turning their kids into the next superstars, but it is the responsibility of coaches to decline them," he says.

Ironically, Shetty has coached Prithvi Shaw and Jemimah Rodrigues, two cricketers who made their international debuts in their teenage years. The bigger irony is that Shaw began playing competitive cricket at the age of seven. Defending the hypocrisy of his argument, Shetty says, "Prithvi was a unique talent. Everyone can't be like him. Extraordinarily talented cricketers do start early, but their training sessions need to be managed well. Even when you see youngsters like Ayush and Vaibhav succeed after early starts, they are exceptions. It cannot be the responsible approach for everyone."

There are also physiological dangers to contend with. Upton points to research showing that those who pick out their sports early are more prone to injury risks, since they may not have the physical capacity to endure the rigour of competition. "Specialising in one single sport from too young an age (13-15 depending on the sport), leads to i) impaired learning, ii) boredom, iii) over-use injury, and iv) burn-out," Upton writes. Tracy Austin and Bjorn Borg offer two more cautionary tales from the tennis world, but the problems exist in other sports too.

"If you do that kind of training, you will need that kind of physical fitness, that kind of nutritional input and the rest and recovery to be appropriate for the demand you are putting on your body physiologically," Divekar says, pointing to research done into early specialisation and injury and career outcomes in football. "Does that hamper your physical development? Does that take a toll on hormones? Because you are kind of interrupting your natural arc of biological development."

Moreover, outside the caveat of sports like gymnastics which require early specialisation, Divekar points out, "There isn't data yet to tell us that just because you specialised early, you will be able to produce better results at the elite level."

Upton notes that success before the age of 13 has no statistical bearing on how successful that child will be by 18. He has argued that success through early specialisation can be merely an illusion of early talent, often borne out of early physical maturity. Wesley Zhang, an American tennis coach, agrees with it and believes being the best at 12 means almost nothing at 20. "I know because I've lived in that world," Zhang said on his Facebook page.

"I was ranked around 20 in the US junior tennis, so I spent years around the kids that everyone had decided were the future of tennis. When I look back now, a lot of them who made it, were not even on that list. A lot of them (who were on that list) burnt out and quit. The kids we were all scared to play, the ones who were winning everything, most of them faded out before it even mattered."

He gives the example of Ben Shelton, the 22-year-old who reached the final of the 2026 US Open. "Back then, he was solid, but nobody there was watching him and thinking he would be top of the world some day."

He has a theory about it. "When you are winning easily at 12, you are not being asked to solve anything. You're big, you're strong, you got there first. The wins just come easy to you. But that clock eventually runs out. Everyone catches up physically. The thing that carried you (to the top), is suddenly gone, and you never learnt what to do without it.

"For the kids who had to grind early, it's a different story. They lost, they were stuck. They had to problem-solve their way through matches nobody handed them. That is the exact thing that carries them when the level evens out."

The Indian Premier League is only 18 years old, but it has already become powerful enough to reshape how a generation of parents imagine what sporting success looks like. Indian cricket is yet to understand where this rush towards specialisation will lead, but hopefully it will be able to acknowledge its perils before a generation is lost to it. For now, the demand for the next teenage superstar is growing faster than the evidence that it can deliver long-term rewards.