Clive Lloyd backs Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s fearless approach, urges coaches not to change him

Former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd has put his weight behind Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s fearless approach and has urged the coaches not to change him at all. Sooryavanshi’s aggressive approach is his X-factor and he likes to take on the opposition bowlers from the get-go.

Sooryavanshi, who had failed to convert his starts into big scores earlier in the tri-series, smashed a magnum opus knock of 94 runs off just 29 balls against Sri Lanka A at Dambulla on Sunday. He scored the fastest List A half-century, taking just 11 deliveries to get to the personal milestone.

The left-hander hit 10 fours and eight sixes in his blistering knock as he batted at the top of his game. The youngster scored his runs at a whirlwind strike rate of 324.14 and played a key role in helping India post an above-par score of 377 runs on the board.

Recently, the southpaw scored 776 runs (highest in the tournament) in 16 matches of IPL 2026 for Rajasthan Royals and played a key role in taking the franchise to the playoffs.

“Well, he would have had a very good test (laughs), and we would be testing his character, his skills, and so on. Yes, he is [agrees with that he is a very good player]. He has good eyesight. He is a good striker of the ball. Yeah, so it would be a good test for him and a good test for our bowlers. The point about the bowlers that we had, why it was difficult to decipher what they were doing, because they all did something different. They didn’t do the same thing. So, it would have been a great test,” Lloyd said in an exclusive interview with RevSportz.

Lloyd, who led the potent West Indies team to glory in 1975 and 1979 World Cup, backed Sooryavanshi to go a long way in his career.

“I think this guy’s got ability, and I’m sure that if he continues to play in the manner that he is playing, and that they don’t try to change it, you know, his style of play, I think we have a young man that we will be watching for quite a long while,” he added.

Sooryvanshi is part of India’s T20I squad for the upcoming UK tour.