Vaibhav Sooryavanshi humiliating great bowlers exposes cricket’s systemic ills: Greg Chappell
4 min readJun 8, 2026 09:02 PM IST While there is reason to celebrate the sheer brilliance of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, one must also look at how the teenager’s effortless evisceration of some of the most accomplished bowlers exposes a worrying direction that cricket is headed towards, according to former Australia captain Greg Chappell. Chappell, considered one of the greatest batters of all time and India’s head coach from 2005 to 2007, said that Sooryavanshi’s success shows that “the modern environment has been engineered to make bowling extinct”. Chappell admitted that he is mightily impressed with Sooryavanshi, comparing the teenager to some of the greats of the game. “In his elegant downswing and flawless balance, there are distinct echoes of the great Graeme Pollock and the incomparable Sir Garfield Sobers. When he slashes across the line or lofts over extra cover, one glimpses the ferocious, instinctive genius of Brian Lara, combined with the devastating, ball-one intent of Adam Gilchrist,” said Chappell in his column for ESPNCricinfo. “It is a classic, pure method being deployed with contemporary …
