Brilliant in Tests and T20Is so far, Yashasvi Jaiswal is yet to play an ODI. Aadya Sharma wonders if India are ready to tweak their batting lineup to accommodate their new batting sensation.
It was just over five years ago when Yashasvi Jaiswal’s name first properly began to echo in Indian cricketing circles. At 17, he’d become the youngest List A double centurion. It was five matches into his Mumbai white-ball career, but by no means was it a shock to anyone who knew how good he was. In two of the other games, he had already smashed centuries as an opener.
Jaiswal was slotted at No.3 at the start of the tournament, but pushed coach Vinayak Samant for a place at the top, eventually getting to replace an out-of-form Jay Bista. “For a 17-year-old to show that confidence to open the innings should be lauded,” Samant later said.
Fast forward to 2025, and Jaiswal is fresh off his maiden Australian Test tour, where he was widely commended for holding his own on a difficult trip for India’s batters.
Now into his second year of international cricket, Jaiswal is a proven Test opener and a frontrunner to open in the T20I side as well.
His List A record is standout too: in 32 innings so far, he’s scored 1,511 runs at 53.96, including five centuries. It includes the 203 against Jharkhand that turned him into an overnight star, paving the way for a hugely successful U19 World Cup in 2022, where he easily topped the run-charts.
So why hasn’t he played ODIs?
In some ways, it's not really surprising. When Jaiswal debuted for India, midway through 2023, India’s batting order was more or less settled. At the World Cup, captain Rohit Sharma would open with Shubman Gill, who was coming on the back of a sizzling run, topping the ODI run-charts that year. India’s campaign crashed in the final to Australia, and the one-day format was conveniently forgotten.
They played a total of three ODIs across 2024 – a series to Sri Lanka that they lost. It would have been a good opportunity to test out Jaiswal, already part of the T20I side, but India has few reasons to break their World Cup pairing. Though India tied one and lost the other two, Rohit and Gill accumulated two 75+ opening partnerships in the series, further enhancing their record together.
In fact, with a 1,000-run cutoff, Gill and Rohit’s opening average is the second-best in ODIs ever, only behind Travis Head and David Warner. They’ve got an impressive 16 fifty-plus scores in 25 innings.
Aside from Rohit and Gill, India have tried out five others as an ODI opener since the start of 2023. Two of them were one-offs, but Jaiswal would consider himself ahead of Ruturaj Gaikwad, Sai Sudharsan and Ishan Kishan as the next choice. Kishan is ranked 25th among the top run-getters in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy, Gaikwad is outside the top-100. Sudharsan is recovering from an injury.
So, can Jaiswal break this well-oiled axis?
