How India’s 14-year-old batting wizard Vaibhav Suriyavanshi sounded an early warning to Australia

Vaibhav, who comes from the state of Bihar, one of India’s poorest and not a traditional cricket centre, has been coached and cajoled from an early age by his father, and his family have made all manner of sacrifices to get him into professional cricket and the bright lights of the IPL.

“Whoever I am today, it is because of my parents,” he has said. “My mother used to wake up at 2am and go to sleep at 11pm because of my practice and then used to make food for me too. My father left his job for me and now my brother is taking care of things. Things were very difficult at home, but God looks after those who aren’t able to succeed despite putting in hard work.”

It is not as though Vaibhav’s skills won’t translate to the longer forms of the game. After all, the under-19s century was made in a Youth Test, and Australia’s coach for the tour, Lachlan Stevens, has a vivid memory of how well Vaibhav coped when the quick bowlers tried to test his back foot game.

The new ball pair of Aiden O’Connor and Nathan Schiller should not feel too slighted by their treatment. England’s Jofra Archer has been unable to hurry up Vaibhav in training for Rajasthan, and on Tuesday morning Mohammed Siraj and Ishant Sharma were similarly ineffective.

“The further he hit our bowlers, the more our bowlers tried to bowl things that were intimidating to him and he was not intimidated at all by it,” Stevens said. “I’m not sure if we quite had the armoury to bowl what we bowled, but he certainly dealt with it appropriately.

“It was an extraordinary display of hitting from a young batter opening the innings. Anything from the waist up was dealt with quite severely. He was very confident. I just remember how clean he was hitting the ball.

“There was no question when he got it right how effective it was. Between the two sides it was the cleanest ball striking. The brutality of it, the brutality of the execution and the sheer power from such a young human, that’s what stayed with me.”

Hogan, meanwhile, has been prolific in scoring runs at every level, and in Queensland has earned comparisons with the slightly older Konstas.

“He’s just very competent and very measured,” Stevens said. “He likes batting for long periods. He’s not super powerful, although he has got some magnificent shots once he gets in. He’s very much a craftsman in terms of how he goes about it.

“He really builds innings and holds his ground, isn’t flustered by the game too much, he just likes to bat and allow the game to unfold in front of him and then react to that.”

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Just last week, Hogan was back in India as part of a training camp in which some scratch matches were played between players from Australia, India and Bangladesh. Wielding his trusty KD bat, Hogan cuffed another century.

“He’s still only 17, Steve, and there’s a lot of factors that go into being a long-term successful player,” Stevens said. “But certainly from a cricketing skill perspective he ticks a lot of the boxes you will need to be able to play for a long period against good players.

“Steve has been playing first grade for Sandgate for a couple of years and batting three there. So he’s been playing senior men’s cricket for a little while and he could be someone who starts to play higher level cricket at an early age. It’s good timing for him in Queensland as they look to some younger players.

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“He doesn’t verbalise his game too much, but I think he’s got a computer in that brain that is always thinking about his cricket. He’s constantly wanting to bat and feel what the game is like to him at different times and in different conditions.”

Vaibhav, of course, has vaulted a few levels. He was playing under-16s in Bihar when he was eight, and under-19s while still purportedly 13. The domestic Ranji Trophy tournament is played by no fewer than 38 teams, affording lots more opportunities than the six state programs in Australia.

There will be those who recall other young players who made headlines for being picked at similar ages – Hasan Raza was hailed as a 14-year-old prodigy when he made his Test debut for Pakistan in 1996 but played only sporadically after that. Australia’s youngest-ever Test cricketer and captain was Ian Craig, who over 11 matches battled impossible comparisons with Sir Donald Bradman.

Whether it is Vaibhav, Hogan, or some of the other highly promising youngsters in the Australian system like fellow Queenslander Callum Vidler, Western Australia’s Mahli Beardman or Konstas, the challenge will be to accomplish more than simply starting early. For that, the prime example remains Tendulkar, a precocious Test player at 16 and a legend when he retired at 40.

“There’s quite a pyramid structure here where you have to work your way through the various levels first before you get those opportunities, and then it depends on the strength of the team above you at that point,” Stevens said.

“I’m sure Steven will work his own way through that with the people around him, and hopefully he’s playing a Test match with Sam Konstas at some point in the future.”