A life in seven chapters

VANSH

Insan

Little brother. Kind heart. And a boy who can tell you exactly who took nineteen wickets in a single Test match.

The film

Growing up, youngest to today

Four minutes, seven chapters, and a whole childhood in between — the little steps, the spark, the birds he refused to leave outside. Pick a chapter and the film jumps straight to it.

Vansh · Growing Up 4 min 13 sec

Tap a chapter to jump there

About

The youngest one

Every family has one person everybody quietly watches grow up. In ours, it is Vansh — the youngest, the softest-hearted, and easily the loudest when a wicket falls.

01

A kind heart

Two soaked birds turned up one afternoon and he simply took them in. Nobody asked him to. That is the whole of him in one story.

02

Hands that help

Carrying, fetching, fixing, pouring — if there is work happening in the house, he has already put his hands into it.

03

Cricket, always

The bat lives by the door. He does not just play — he knows the averages, the records, and precisely why your favourite player is overrated.

04

Arrow Gold

The Arrow Gold Award, won for exactly the kind of effort he never mentions himself. We are mentioning it for him.

The cricket desk

He does not just watch it

Some people follow cricket. Vansh keeps a ledger of it in his head — the averages, the freak spells, the numbers that have stood for seventy years. Here are eight of them.

99.94Don BradmanTest batting average. Four runs in his last innings would have made it 100. He got none.
400*Brian LaraHighest individual Test innings, against England in Antigua, 2004.
800M. MuralitharanTest wickets — more than any bowler has taken, or is likely to.
100Sachin TendulkarInternational centuries across Tests and one-day cricket. Nobody else has ninety.
19Jim LakerWickets in a single Test match, Old Trafford, 1956. Out of a possible twenty.
264Rohit SharmaHighest individual score in a men's one-day international, Kolkata, 2014.
952Sri LankaFor six declared against India, 1997 — the largest innings total in Test history.
6Yuvraj SinghSixes in one over at the 2007 T20 World Cup. Fourteen deliveries later he had a fifty.

The test

Ten questions. Good luck.

These are the ones he answers before the commentator finishes asking. See how you do.

Question 1 of 10 0 correct

Loading…

    Honours

    What he brought home

    Awarded

    The Arrow Gold Award

    For performance and effort on the field — the kind he shrugs off if you bring it up, and then quietly goes back to the nets to earn again.