There is no better advertisement for the opportunity that cricket presents in India than Yashasvi Jaiswal. The Gen Z lad (born 2001), fourth of six children of a small Uttar Pradesh hardware store owner, moved out of home at the age of 10 and his desire to learn cricket brought him to a coach who saw the talent and took him under his wing.
As they say, the rest is history, including his most recent feat of scoring double hundreds in successive Tests, the third youngest since Sir Donald Bradman and Vinod Kambli. In between, he sought living space in a Mumbai dairy outlet in exchange for work and when living in a tent in the Mumbai Maidan helped friends sell snacks from their stalls around the oval, so he could get a sort-of meal to satiate his hunger.
But by no means is Jaiswal’s spectacular success with the willow unique. Any number of young cricketers has found their metier after moving out of their small — from a cricketing point of view — home states for greater opportunities.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s fantastic journey from a starting out as ticket collector on a railway platform to unprecedented success as international cricket captain is part of folklore now. He could well be a desi superhero in a comic strip or movie for his exploits on the “maidan”.
While the Dhoni and Jaiswal success stories are the stuff of dreams, many have also fallen by the wayside since they were unable to cope with success at a very young age. What makes Jaiswal different is that he has his head squarely fixed to his young shoulders. The way in which he explained how a batter should make the best use of good current form and accumulate runs, while always batting positively in the new era of cricket so influenced by the speed of instant cricket, is enormously impressive.
Having heard from an ex-England player-analyst that he may have had things easy against Team England, Jaiswal could have told him that he was one who had to battle for everything in life — from catching a crowded Mumbai suburban to getting a plate of spicy panipuri.
Given the southpaw's taste for prodigious run making, parts of which came in a partnership with another batter in Sarfaraz Khan with a very similar rags-in-a-rural-UP-patch-to-riches-through-cricket background, what an inspiring story it is for India’s youngsters! Such success can come only from dedication, discipline and diligence!
