“He has to wait,” said Gautam Gambhir, head coach of the Indian men’s cricket team, in the afterglow of a 3-0 demolition of Afghanistan.The operative word in that four-word sentence was the last one: wait. A concept increasingly alien to Generation Z. The unabashed, unafraid cohort that, according to a global study conducted by Yahoo and OMD Worldwide, has an attention span of 1.3 seconds.Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the youngest debutant of a nation with cricketing pedigree nearing a century, will have to bide his time before claiming a place in India’s T20I XI. The rope will be long, Gambhir has promised. But first, the wait must be longer still.“From Vaibhav’s point of view, it was again a very clear conversation that he has to wait for his opportunity. We know the kind of talent he has. We know what he can do, but again, someone who’s done extremely well over a period of two years (Sanju Samson), obviously, he will always be ahead of someone who’s just walked into the team. So, whenever he gets that run, he will get a longer run as well. That’s how cricket goes, whether you’re a 15-year-old or a 30-year-old. When you have to wait for your opportunity, you have to wait for your opportunity,” said Gambhir.It is a sentiment strangely out of step with the age it is spoken in — this era is being heralded as the era of sporting prodigies. But, one must know — there is global sports, and then there is Indian cricket.Still, it could be worth borrowing a page from the world beyond the boundary rope.In a timeline in which Sooryavanshi was not yet a household name — which may sound like another age altogether, though it was only September 2023 — football had already found its wunderkind. At 16 years, a month and 26 days, Lamine Yamal made his debut for Spain.Story continues below this adBefore he did so, Spain’s coach Luis de la Fuente was asked whether it would be a gamble to trust a talent that raw, that unrefined.“I have total confidence in him. Lamine appeared very good to me watching him on TV, but working with him you realise even more his potential. He seems even better,” de la Fuente had said.In the 44th minute against Georgia, Yamal entered the field as Spain’s youngest international. Thirty minutes later, he became its youngest goalscorer. Three years hence, he is the youngest to win both the European Championship and the World Cup.Change the green of the football pitch for the asphalt of a Formula 1 circuit, and attention shifts to Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes’ youngest-ever driver at 18 years and 203 days. That, too, a replacement of the seven-time champion, Lewis Hamilton.Story continues below this ad“I made up my mind five minutes after Lewis Hamilton told me that he’s going to Ferrari,” team principal Toto Wolff said after signing Antonelli.Wouldn’t it be a risk? “When you invest in young drivers, you need to be prepared to take that risk,” he had said. A year later, Antonelli became the youngest-ever championship leader.By deciding not to tinker with an experienced pair up top, the Indian team management have made their penchant for risk aversion evident.Numbers, though, argue Sooryavanshi’s case with quiet insistence. Since his debut in the Indian Premier League, he ranks first among batters for powerplay runs (665), strike rate (228.95) and sixes (54). His international debut did not possess the same shimmer as Yamal’s — he made 14 against England in Manchester — but with 151 runs in three T20Is against Zimbabwe, which earned him the Player of the Tournament award, he had shown his ability to adapt, improvise and overcome difficulties.Story continues below this adFor Gambhir, though, the calculus runs deeper than anything de la Fuente or Wolff had to weigh. Sooryavanshi’s direct competitor had also won a Player of the Tournament award recently — not in a series against twelfth-ranked Zimbabwe, but at the T20 World Cup. Sanju Samson.After the Afghanistan series, where Samson finished as the second-highest run scorer with 117 runs at 39 and 180, Gambhir alluded to it.“Someone doesn’t become a Player of the Tournament in a World Cup without having any talent, so he (Sanju Samson) has done enough. Obviously, it was tough, probably the toughest decision I’ve taken in my coaching tenure, leaving him out in that England series because obviously the way he performed before that. But again, sometimes you go with a player’s form as well, and in this series, I was always very clear, from my point of view, that we want to go back with the combination that we had during the World Cup,” said Gambhir.Since the T20 World Cup, only two openers from Test-playing nations — Abhishek Sharma and Brian Bennett — have outscored Samson in T20Is.Story continues below this adCricket, like life, becomes intelligible only in hindsight. The dilemma Gambhir finds himself in contains no right or wrong choice — only his choice. And that, he made it clear on Thursday night.So, we wait.