This is an exciting and delicate time for the managers of India's men's teams. The 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is an obviously extraordinary talent, who might just be the best T20 batter in the world. He has forced the selectors to offer the captain and the coach the option of playing him even though India are blessed with a highly successful top order of Sanju Samson, Abhishek Sharma and Ishan Kishan. The team management understandably wants to time Sooryavanshi's introduction right. They neither want to hold him back nor rush him into international cricket.
The team management is the best judge of how Sooryavanshi is tracking and when to give him the inevitable debut, but what should ideally not be a consideration is whether it is fair on the incumbent top order. Selection is not about being fair to players. It is by its very nature unfair on players who miss out marginally.
It was unfair on Suryakumar Yadav, the first-ever World-Cup-winning captain to be dropped from the next squad. Yet the selectors saw Shreyas Iyer's form and, in their expert judgement, felt he was likelier to do the job in the middle order than Suryakumar.
Selection is about identifying what is best for the team in the immediate and not-so-immediate future. Man-management is about handling the ones you have been "unfair" to. Which is why it is often advised that cricketers spend some time away from the game before coming back as selectors because as cricketers you are understandably wired to see things in terms of what is fair for you as an individual and what is unfair.
The team management are all still human so you can see where they are coming from when Sitanshu Kotak, the batting coach, suggested it wouldn't be "right" to drop someone who is scoring runs just to give Sooryavanshi an opportunity.
If Sooryavanshi were your normal Indian talent - still an extremely high level of expertise involved there - you wouldn't really be able to fault the argument. Sooryavanshi is not normal. He is the kind that comes but rarely in history. Not since Sachin Tendulkar has the world seen such a prodigious talent and temperament to be able to compete in elite sport at such young age. Sooryavanshi doesn't need to take the usual route of scoring runs in domestic cricket to show he is good. The reactions of Jofra Archer in the nets and of Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc in matches tell a story. If Sooryavanshi is fit and hitting the ball well, it might just be time to make sure you are not in his way.
Abhishek or Samson or Kishan will have to understand. Sooner or later they will have to make way. Being an India cricketer comes with plenty of privileges of facilities and exposure, but it can also be cruel. You don't have to fail to be second-best. Right now, with India's two seam-bowling allrounders injured, there can be a case made for playing an unbalanced side and playing all four of these batters at the expense of Washington Sundar.
The other side of the argument is worth examining. If a player is left out despite performing as well and as selflessly as the top three have been doing, it can breed insecurity and undo the successful shift that India have made from traditional batting to T20 hitting, which calls for a certain amount of disregard for individual success. This again calls for astute man-management to justify the big bucks the leaders of the team make.
It can also be argued that there is no rush. Sooryavanshi has decades ahead of him. The next T20 World Cup and the LA Olympics are both in 2028. Then again, there has to be a temptation to explore the full extent of Sooryavanshi's talent. Surely you have got to be flirting with the idea of playing him in the ODI World Cup in 2027? To be able to decide on that, you have to give him games, and let him come across some of the challenges he might need to adjust to in international cricket.
Again, the team management is best placed to make the eventual decision on when Sooryavanshi makes his debut and how ambitious they are with him with regards to the ODI World Cup in South Africa, but the fairness of that call should not be a consideration.