Tearful phone calls, plastic balls & range-hitting – the inside story of how Yashasvi Jaiswal conquered IPL on his way to an India spot

A new era of batting is slowly making its way into India’s Test team. Cheteshwar Pujara’s departure was perhaps the first big blow, and more are likely to exit over time. The first batch of that change includes Yashasvi Jaiswal, the latest entry in Mumbai Cricket’s ever-growing list of batting prodigies.

For those who have seen his growth over the years, the extent of progress is barely surprising. At each rung of the ladder, Jaiswal has put his head down and scored in bucketloads, only getting better.

You would have heard his backstory already, or at least one of the many versions of it. An emigrated boy who clawed up the levels in Mumbai – a city cricket is as competitive as anywhere else in the country – wriggling through poverty to stand at the doorway of the game’s highest honours. He is gifted with a rock-hard technique and crisp strokes, made-to-order for the longest game but, at the same time, also flaunting the panache for the modern game.

Jaiswal’s domestic numbers are as good as they come. At the time of writing, he averages 80.21 from 15 first-class games, including nine centuries and a best of 265. In List A cricket, he averages 53.96, studded with five tons. This includes a 203, which made him the youngest List A double-centurion ever, at 17.

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Becoming an all-format player is a skill few have managed to master. T20 is the best way for a youngster to gain overnight attention. Indian cricket is fraught with those who could score big at the domestic level, but do not manage to go one rung above. For several others, the IPL has proved to be a ready launchpad. You’re facing real competition from around the world in a format that can be instantly rewarding.

Months before he turned up for India at the U19 World Cup, his first global competition, Jaiswal had already secured a multi-crore deal in the IPL with Rajasthan Royals. Yet to turn 18, he had entered the big league before actually playing in one. Even for a rapidly growing teenage prodigy, it wouldn’t have been an easy proposition.

Despite all his obvious talent, it did not quite work out. He played three matches in his first IPL season, opening with Steve Smith, then with Jos Buttler. An aggregate of 40 and a strike rate of 91 was nowhere close to his astronomical batting numbers elsewhere.

“At that time during practice, I was dead sure he would not be able to perform in the IPL,” Jwala Singh, Jaiswal’s childhood coach, mentor and guardian tells Wisden India. “The IPL was just too far for him.”

The confidence just wasn’t there. It reached a point where Jwala even contemplated asking Jaiswal to request Rajasthan Royals that he wouldn’t be able to play: “He had a shoulder injury as well during that time. But it was a big opportunity, so he went.”

The lack of preparation can be attributed to the months leading up to his first IPL. Flying high after a record-breaking U19 World Cup in South Africa, he was crushed under the global lockdown. Cooped up in his quarters, he had little space for practice. The batting momentum was slowly sucked out of him. To add to that, he had a shoulder strain that needed rehabilitation.

“We stayed at home for five-six months and it was a very frustratingly negative, discouraging time for us,” Jwala recalls. “During the lockdown, he was staying with me, and we used to wonder every single day when all of this will be over”.

Read Interview: Yashasvi Jaiswal Won’t Be Fazed By Lost Momentum

Making do with an indoor setup and throwdowns from his coach, he tried hard to get back into batting rhythm. At the same time, he worked on his strength and flexibility within the confines of the house with TheraBand. The Royals coaches chipped in too, helping him out with schedules and monitoring his progress on WhatsApp groups.

It was still a big jump. And it didn’t quite come off in the first attempt: “He did not do well [IPL 2020]. When he came back, he was very down and cried over the phone. ‘Sir, maine apna pehla IPL barbaad kar diya. Kuchh nahi kiya maine. (I have ruined my first IPL. I just couldn’t do anything).’”

Jwala was then in Gorakhpur, his native town. Mumbai was under a lockdown, and there was no ground available for practice. A quick intervention was needed: “Straight away tu abhi yahan pe aaja, aur hum log phir se zero se start karenge.” (Come here right away. We shall start from scratch).”

The first facet of his development was adjusting him to the extra bowling speeds in the IPL: “We got a whole ground [in Gorakhpur] with cement pitches, and got very hard plastic balls. I asked quick bowlers to bowl as fast at him as they could.”

Yashasvi was initially apprehensive about the training method: “Sir, with this practice, I will struggle a lot in red-ball cricket. My whole batting technique will get ruined.”

“If you have to dominate and do something big in white-ball cricket, you will have to practice at this pace, this bounce going forward”, Jwala told him.

Yashasvi struggled with the change to start with. “I had to turn an U19 player into a T20 player,” recalls Jwala. It took a month of struggle but once the hiccups subsided, he slowly got better. And once the improvement was sufficient, he was shifted out of the nets, and into the centre wicket.

“The boundary was very long, about 70 to 80 metres. I told him: ‘Just hit sixes, I don’t mind how many times you get out. Just hit sixes’. He had his doubts, but I kept saying ‘Whatever bad had to happen, has already happened. If you want to do something big, you’ll have to dominate attacks this way.”

Slowly but surely, Jaiswal worked on his power-hitting, waiting for normalcy to resume outside the confines of the Gorakhpur ground. And then, the BCCI announced the resumption of domestic cricket with the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

Having waited long enough, and armed with a revamped approach, he was ready to drive on the expressway again.

At a Syed Mushtaq Ali selection match, he pounded an astonishing 52-ball hundred, and called Jawala immediately: “Yeh toh kuchh alag hi ho gaya! Yeh toh gazab ho gaya, yeh kya ho gaya sir? (This is amazing, incredible, what even is this?!)’”

“That was the transformation part. Settling took time because we were doing something entirely fresh,” explains Jwala.

By next season, his game had hopped up a few levels. He was still the lean young kid touching his twenties, but the shots had a stronger punch to them, and the timing was more pronounced. It was a different Jaiswal against the quicks, confident and commanding. In IPL 2021, the strike rate went up to 148.

There was still some polishing to do before that. In a bid to expand his run-scoring areas in the powerplay, he found himself shuffling a fair bit to the off stump. It restricted his natural flow toward the off side.

“At one point, in an attempt to hit, he was getting into the line of the ball. He used to take the initial movement and go to off stump or outside against the new ball. When you do that, you don’t get room outside the off-stump to play a shot. Then you try hitting in the mid-wicket region and all. He was doing that but we fixed it before IPL 2 [his second season].

“The foundations we laid in Gorakhpur, the runs he has scored at the domestic level, and the support of Rajasthan Royals were the reasons for his success. Ever since [head coach] Kumar Sangakkara entered, and [director of cricket] Zubin Bharucha helped…

“I must give credit to the whole Royals camp. A captain like Sanju Samson says: ‘Go be fearless, play as you want to. Don’t worry about getting out’. If a player won’t perform in this environment, where will he?”

Three IPL seasons later, Yashasvi is on the cusp of an India debut. The IPL Emerging Player trophy is just two months old, after a breakthrough season worth 625 runs, a hundred, five fifties, a strike rate of 164 and 26 sixes, more than his tally from the first three editions combined.

All that range-hitting in Gorakhpur has brought results, and yet, hasn’t broken his sublime long-format spell. Last September, he became the joint-fastest to Indian to reach 1,000 first-class runs, equalling two other Mumbai legends Rusi Modi and Amol Muzumdar (the second-highest run-getter in Ranji Trophy history, and until recently Mumbai’s coach).

At Dominica, Yashasvi could add his name to a list of India Test debutants in the West Indies, a mix of some all-time greats and some what-if careers. Given the trajectory so far, the fairytale will only be complete if, by the time he’s done, he ends up in the former category.