En route to his 214 not out against England in the Rajkot Test match, Yashasvi Jaiswal broke multiple records.
Subscribe to the Wisden Cricket YouTube channel for post-match analysis, player interviews, and much more.
Yashasvi Jaiswal opened batting after India secured a 126-run lead in the third Test of the five-match series at Rajkot. He retired hurt on 104 on the third evening with a back pain, but returned on the fourth morning to bring up his second double hundred in as many Test matches.
He finished unbeaten on 214 from 236 balls when India declared at 430-4, setting England 557 in four sessions and half an hour. India became the first team to declare against an England team led by Ben Stokes.
All three of Jaiswal’s Test hundreds (171, 209, 214 not out) are in excess of 150. He drew level with Javed Miandad, Brian Lara, Andrew Jones, Matthew Sinclair, and Mahela Jayawardene, and is only behind Graeme Smith, who converted his first four tons into 150s.
He also became the third Indian to score double-hundreds in consecutive Tests, after Vinod Kambli (224 against England, 227 against Zimbabwe in 1992/93) and Virat Kohli (213 and 243 against Sri Lanka in 2017/18).
He also became the third Indian to score two double-hundreds in the same bilateral series, after Vinoo Mankad (223 and 231 against New Zealand in 1955/56) and Kohli in the aforementioned series.
Jaiswal now has 545 runs in three Tests in the series, already the fifth-most for India against England, after Kohli (655 at home, 2016/17), Rahul Dravid (602 in England, 2002), Kohli (593 in England, 2018), and Vijay Manjrekar (586 at home, 1961/62). With two games left, he has a realistic chance to set a new record.
After 13 innings, Jaiswal now has 861 runs, the fourth-most by any Indian at this point of their careers, after Kambli (965), Sunil Gavaskar (918), and Mayank Agarwal (872). However, he can equal Kambli’s record (14) of being the fastest Indian to 1,000 Test runs.
Over the course of the innings, Jaiswal hit 12 sixes, equalling the world record for most sixes in a Test innings. Wasim Akram had also hit 12 sixes against Zimbabwe at Sheikhupura in 1996/97. Jaiswal improved on the previous Indian record of eight (shared by Navjot Sidhu and Agarwal) by a considerable margin.
With two Tests to go, Jaiswal has already set a new world record for most sixes in a bilateral Test series, eclipsing Rohit Sharma’s record of 19 against South Africa in 2019/20. No one else has hit more than 15.
Jaiswal hit James Anderson for three consecutive sixes, falling one short of Kapil Dev’s Indian record (and joint world record) of four sixes in four balls in Test cricket. However, he draw level level with MS Dhoni (off Dave Mohammed), Hardik Pandya (off Malinda Pushpakumara), and Rohit (off Dane Piedt).
Anderson’s 21-run over (dot, six, six, six, two, one) was his third-most expensive of his Test career. He has previously conceded 28 to George Bailey (four, six, two, four, six, six) and 24 (six fours) to Sanath Jayasuriya.
One oddity of Jaiswal’s innings was his two separate hundreds. He had opened batting and retired on 104 on the third day, and returned at 246-3 to add another 110. He added 155 with Shubman Gill during the first phase and an unbroken 172 with Sarfaraz Khan in the second.
Sarfaraz himself became the fourth Indian to cross the 50-mark in each innings on Test debut, after Dilawar Hussain, Gavaskar, and Shreyas Iyer.
Jaiswal now has 2,706 runs at 77.31 and Sarfaraz 4,042 at 70.91 in first-class cricket. These are the second- and fourth-best batting averages in history with a 2,000-run cut-off: Don Bradman averaged 95.14 and Vijay Merchant 71.64.
This was the third time India have scored 400 twice in a Test match. They had made 407 and 407-9 declared against Pakistan at Kolkata in 2005/06 and 426 and 412-4 declared against Sri Lanka at Ahmedabad in 2009/10.
India’s 430 is now fifth on totals achieved by a team twice in a Test match (they had made 445 in the first innings). The list reads 490 (Pakistan 588 and 490-8d against India, Faisalabad 2005/06), 481 (South Africa 530 and 481 against England, Durban 1939/40), 460 (Australia 511-6d and 460-8 against New Zealand, Wellington 1973/74), and 450 (Australia 450 and 452 against England, Sydney 1924/25).
