Shooting Stars

On a fateful March evening in 1996, Vinod Kambli left a blazing Eden Gardens in tears, and everything changed for him. With India eight down against Sri Lanka in their World Cup semi-final, the then 24-year-old was India’s last hope. He did plead with the officials to continue the match, but the decision to award the game to Sri Lanka, the eventual champions, had already been made.

A little while ago, Sachin Tendulkar was looking to construct an innings, to help rebuild India after losing his opening partner, Navjot Singh Sindhu, early. Tendulkar got stumped for 65, and when the eighth wicket fell in the 35th over, irate Kolkata fans took matters into their own hands. Kambli was unbeaten on 10 and India 120/8 in pursuit of a 252-run target.

One heroic knock in defeat, and even an improbable chase, would have added another glorious chapter to Indian cricket. But what remains of a player once touted as the next big thing are tattered glimpses of unfulfilled dreams, now being pointed out as a cautionary tale. Add the Tendulkar story, and it reads like a morality play, drawing up polar opposites—one reduced to a caricature and the other elevated to God-like status.

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“You’ve got the talent, but it’s a long race, and you have to sustain it. Everybody can’t have the brains or the maturity of Sachin Tendulkar,” former India seamer Atul Wassan analyses.

Growing up together, shattering records as a pair—the Tendulkar-Kambli story will remain one of the finest in Indian cricket. Sadly, the Kambli chapter chronicles an altogether different aspect of the game. It’s a fact that only a handful of “next big things” have truly managed to crack the code to success.

Eight years later, Kambli played one last time at Eden Gardens, leading Mumbai in a Ranji One-Day Trophy match against Bengal. He scored 31 in the five-run win, but it was too small a consolation. In a Test career spanning 17 matches, the left-handed batter scored 1,084 runs at an average of 54.20.

Fast forward to 2025, and another talent from the famed maidens of Mumbai is dealing with a similar career slump. Prithvi Shaw, blessed with the skill to win matches single-handedly, took Indian domestic cricket by storm in 2013 when he scored 546 runs for Rizvi Springfield in the Harris Shield. He was only 14. And he couldn’t have timed it better. Tendulkar had retired only a few days ago.

Fast-tracked into the national set-up, Shaw scored his maiden Test century at 19 in 2018 against the West Indies. But he hasn’t played for India for four years, the last one, a T20I against Sri Lanka. More worryingly, he found no takers in the latest Indian Premier League (IPL) auction.

Tipped to be the ‘next Tendulkar in the making’, Shaw showed glimpses of his superb batting talent in the limited outings he has had for the country. He guided India to the Under-19 World Cup title in 2018 and was primed for a headline-grabbing career. But as India enter a new cycle, it’s his one-time deputy, Shubman Gill, who will be leading a young Test team while Shaw finds himself ostracised even from the domestic team.

Since young players are sometimes not able to handle easy money and early fame, there’s a need for the right mentorship and a solid core group to help them Wassan says. Only 25, Shaw can of course make a triumphant return to international cricket. But a lot will depend on how well he handles the pressure and how willing he is to “educate” himself, the former seamer points out.

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Cases like these highlight the importance of the right kind of grooming from an early age. The IPL 2025 and recent domestic tournaments witnessed a host of young talents making headlines for all the right reasons. But there is also a lingering worry about the future of these greenhorns. “For instance, everybody is going gaga over Vaibhav Suryavanshi now, but he has to be protected like a cotton ball. Otherwise, they will praise him to the skies and he’ll think he’s God now,” Wassan warns. “It’s very hard to bring him to the ground and tell him that this is just the first step.”

Suryavanshi took his IPL bow with a six off the first ball he faced, then a few days later, he hit a 35-ball century—the second-fastest in IPL history after Chris Gayle’s 30-ball knock. This is also the fastest by an Indian, beating Yusuf Pathan’s record by two balls. By the end of the 2025 season, the teenager had smashed 18 fours and 24 sixes in seven games to end with a strike rate of 206.55.

Former Bengal captain Deep Dasgupta feels that the Indian cricket ecosystem is robust, but the responsibility to mentor young players does not rest entirely on the system. “Yes, there’ll always be cracks and always people falling through those cracks,” he says. “But I think those cracks are very narrow...The responsibility boils down to individuals as well.”

Sanjay Manjrekar, who shared the Eden Gardens dressing room with Tendulkar and Kambli when India were deemed to have defaulted the 1996 World Cup semi-final, agrees. “In the past as well, there were cases of people who lost their way,” he points out. “So, it’s something that is beyond any administration’s control...Ultimately, it’s up to the individual to be mature enough to know all this. Those who aren’t will obviously not sustain that success for long and will have trouble adjusting.”

Suffice to say that prodigies do dazzle, but if not paired with the right work ethic and/or luck, they are in danger of crashing spectacularly.

Jayanta Oinam is associate editor, Outlook. He is based in New Delhi.

This article appears in Outlook Magazine’s June 21, 2025 issue, Innings/Outings, which captures a turning point in Indian cricket —from retiring legends to small-town stars reshaping the game’s power map. It appeared in print as Shooting Stars.