Sanju Samson has revealed that the bat used by Vaibhav Sooryavanshi to smash the fastest century by an Indian in Indian Premier League history was a gift to the teenage prodigy from the Rajasthan Royals captain.
Soon after Vaibhav Sooryavanshi joined the Royals’ camp, the fresh-faced teenager’s passion for collecting bats didn’t go unnoticed by the RR captain, who gave Vaibhav a welcome gift from his own kitbag.
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“He is known for collecting bats from the first day he came here,” Samson said in a post posted on Rajasthan Royals’ social media. “So I could feel how he was wanting a bat and he used to hang around my bat and my kit bag for a long time and I could feel that he needed not one, maybe a couple of bats from my bag.
“So I wanted to give him one and I gave him a really good bat at the start of the season so that he could prepare and then get used to it. And then I think, yeah, very happy that he played with it and something great happened here.”
To say that something great happened would be understating what Vaibhav Sooryavanshi truly achieved with the willow gifted to him by Samson.
The 14-year-old smashed a blistering 35-ball hundred against Gujarat Titans, creating several records along the way.
He broke Yusuf Pathan’s 15-year-old record for scoring the fastest century by a Royals batter besides also making the second-fastest hundred in the IPL overall behind Chris Gayle.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi finished his knock against Gujarat Titans on 101 off 38 balls with a strike rate of 265.78. He also hit 11 sixes during his hundred against GT, equalling Murali Vijay’s record of most maximums by a player in an IPL innings.
Vaibhav’s spectacular debut campaign in the Indian Premier League also saw him win the IPL 2025 Super Striker of the Season award, after finishing with a strike rate 206.55 from seven games.
Not one to rest on his laurels and eager to kick on, the explosive left-hander most recently smashed 190 off just 90 balls in a practice match at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru last week.
Vaibhav is currently on tour in England as a part of the India U19 team. They are scheduled to play a 50-over warm-up game, five Youth ODIs and two multi-day matches against England, starting June 24.
