Udaipur, November 26, 2024 - Vaibhav Suryavanshi, the 13-year-old Ranji player from Samastipur (Bihar), was bought by Rajasthan Royals (RR) for Rs 1.10 crore in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 auction held yesterday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Vaibhav entered the IPL auction at a base price of Rs 30 lakh and RR head coach Rahul Dravid outdid an intense bid from Delhi Capitals to swoop him up.

Vaibhav is a left-handed top order batsman with a penchant for hitting long sixes. He made his debut during the 2023-24 Ranji Trophy season against Mumbai at the age of just 12 years and 284 days.

 The cricket prodigy has already represented India in the Under-19 team and scored a century while opening the batting against Australia Under-19 in a four-day match in Chennai less than two months ago. He has played five Ranji games and is currently representing Bihar in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy T20 matches. On November 23, he made his T20 debut against Rajasthan.

In the 16-year history of IPL, Vaibhav has become the youngest ever to be listed for an IPL game. At just 13 years and 243 days old he has received his first contract for the world’s biggest cricket league. In fact, the cricketer is younger than the tournament itself!

RR CEO Jake Lush McCrum said post the deal: "He's been to our high performance centre in Nagpur, he had trials there and really impressed our coaching set-up there. He's an incredible talent and of course you got to have the confidence so he can step up to the IPL level. So lots of work will go in in the coming months to continue to develop him but hell of a talent and we're really excited to have him as part of the franchise."