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?

The answer to that, to a large extent, depends on what the future holds for Rohit. Now retired from T20Is, and having been coy about his Test future, the India captain, who turns 38 in April, could see the 2025 Champions Trophy as a perfect opportunity to sign off from 50-over cricket. The 2013 edition of the same tournament turned his career around, giving India one of their finest white-ball batters.

The 25-year-old Gill, touted for long as the pillar of India’s batting future, is on course to enjoy a long ODI career. Since 2023, both Rohit and Gill have impressive ODI strike rates as well, 120.27 and 102.88 respectively. It played a part in India having the third-highest runs per over in that period (6.06), marginally behind Australia and England.

In comparison, Jaiswal’s List A strike rate appears a bit pale: 86.19. The issue is, it represents an older version of Jaiswal.

He hasn’t played a List A match since November 2022 – that’s before he made his India debut, and months before he had a standout IPL season, unlocking a different side of his hitting potential.

Speaking to Wisden last year, Zubin Bharucha, the director of high-performance at Rajasthan Royals, explained how Jaiswal had spent a lot of time at their centre of excellence in Nagpur, expanding on his hitting abilities across formats.

“We have taken the format specific versions out of our teachings and philosophy, and focus only on how to maximise runs per ball, by getting into positions to hit balls into areas where there are no fielders,” Bharucha explained. “We're able to practice on varying pitch conditions varying from spinning to seaming pitches, volume of balls, variety of bowlers, frequency and variation in bowlers, constantly changing time and pace.

“If we cover all these bases we don’t believe there is any requirement to signal out the version beyond making some tiny tweaks along the way.”

Jaiswal is now scoring a lot quicker than he used to in 2022. With a 20-innings cutoff since his T20I debut, only four openers in world cricket have scored faster than Jaiswal’s 164.31. The period includes three T20 centuries: one, a 48-ball ton in the 2023 Asian Games, and one each in the 2023 and 2024 editions of the IPL. His strike rate in these two seasons has been 163.61 and 155.91.

Even in Tests, Jaiswal has shown moments of impressive gear-shifting, such as his hat-trick of sixes against James Anderson during a record-breaking Rajkot double century, a 31-ball fifty versus New Zealand, and more recently, four fours off a Mitchell Starc over.

Since his debut, Jaiswal is the leading run-getter in international cricket, despite only playing two out of three formats. He’s on a red-hot streak, and there is good reason to believe he will translate that in one-dayers, where he will have more space to pace his power, unfurling bursts of hits often seen in his Test knocks. Only a handful of Indians have a List A double century to his name: Jaiswal managed that when he was a 17-year-old watered-down version of his current self.

The question is when: should India take the punt with him, and rejig their batting order so close to the Champions Trophy? The third, fourth and fifth spots are most likely to be retained by Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul, with the all-rounders to follow. Does Rohit have space to drop himself down the order to accommodate a youngster (which would make for a full-circle from 2013).

Or, does Jaiswal take Gill’s spot?

Apart from bringing a left-right dynamic, Jaiswal (if picked) goes into the England ODIs in form, unlike the other two Indian openers. Both are coming off a torrid tour of Australia. The solo ODI series of 2024 wasn’t good for Gill either, managing 57 runs from three games, with Rohit doing the bulk of the opening scoring. In T20Is too, Gill’s 2024 was worse compared to 2023 (strike rate down from 145.11 to 133). Rohit struck at 160.16 until his retirement at the end of the T20 World Cup.

It won’t be easy to budge Gill, whose 2023 was one of the best calendar years ever for an opener. But it’s also been a while since, and Jaiswal has shown a more well-rounded body of work. Pushing Jaiswal ahead of Gill would be too bold a call knowing India, who have largely stayed away from making big changes at big events. Waiting for one more tournament, and replacing Rohit after, would be easier.

But if they do go for Jaiswal, it’s absolutely certain they won’t be disappointed.

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