In his first Test in England, Yashasvi Jaiswal continued to pile on the runs with a mesmerising ton. Ben Gardner writes on an innings that firmly cemented him as next in line to Sachin Tendulkar.
Sydney, 2004 bore witness to one of Sachin Tendulkar’s most famous innings. Without a fifty in the series heading into the decider, his defining cover drive turned against him, Tendulkar’s 241 was constructed entirely without a boundary through his favoured area. It was an innings born of restraint and introspection, and began one of many anni mirabili after a rare poor year.
At Headingley, Yashasvi Jaiswal made a hundred whose wagon wheel was a mirror image, just 11 runs and no boundaries nurdled through the leg-side. Now, this was no feat of monk-like self-denial. Jaiswal has always been off-side dominant, and he looked in most trouble when aiming to hit balls on his pads through mid-wicket and missing. It’s an area of his game England may look to exploit as the series progresses, as they almost did when Brydon Carse pinned him with a yorker, out if the bowler had not overstepped. On the other hand, if you can drive like Jaiswal can, why would you ever try and do anything else?
Not that this was an innings defined by his front-foot play, though it was adorned with four sumptuous boundaries through mid-off. Early on, as England probed with the new ball, there was the caution you would expect from an opener on these shores, controlled edges angled down to third man, drop-and-runs stolen under the opposition’s eyes.
Later, his forearms began to cramp from how often England fed his cut shot. These included a flay up and over point for six as he saw out the bouncer ploy, he and Shubman Gill making merry as Ben Stokes ran out of answers in the middle session. For Gill, this was a moment of redemption and ascension as he took on the captaincy after a turbulent period, a first hundred outside Asia to show he could do it in unusual climes. For Jaiswal, it was merely a continuation and confirmation of what was already clear: This is the best batting talent on the planet.
Barring a two-Test series in South Africa, everything has come easy thus far. There was a hundred on Test debut in West Indies. Another hundred in his first Test in Australia. A mere 80 on his home bow, but to kickstart five Tests against England that reaped two double hundreds and the most sixes ever by a batter in a single series. Already it’s a CV that would satisfy some in a whole career, and a start that puts him on track to surpass everyone from his country since the main one. And now this, in his first innings in England, at the start of a new era for the India Test side, to cement himself as the team’s batting spearhead.
Captaincy eludes Jaiswal, but that's okay
And Jaiswal is its spearhead, even if he’s not the captain. As the candidates to succeed Rohit Sharma were slowly whittled down, it was strange, in some ways, that Jaiswal never seemed a serious contender. Or rather, it’s strange that it wasn’t strange. Already established as their most reliable batter, he was also one of very few to come out of the Australia tour in credit. When a new Test captain is needed, any established batter tends to be part of the conversation by default. But for Jaiswal, captaincy has never been something asked of him.
Even as he aced the Under-19 level, making 400 runs in six innings in the 2020 World Cup, it was Priyam Garg who led India. Ranji Trophy runs came and went at Mumbai without the captaincy being conferred, where the honour of leading the team is almost as hard-fought as it is at the national level. A mooted switch to Goa, with the captaincy there reportedly part of the attraction, didn’t pan out, and an IPL side hasn’t come calling yet.
There’s no need to look at why too deeply. For some, it just doesn’t fit, and that’s fine. Tendulkar, of course, was one of those, the captaincy never sitting comfortably on the Little Master’s shoulders. He led India in just an eighth of his Tests, seeming too otherworldly to understand the pressures upon his more mortal teammates. Instead, it was deemed sensible to let him concentrate on what he did best. “It’s not in the small one’s destiny,” was how Mohammad Azharuddin put it.
Perhaps the same is true for Jaiswal, or perhaps it’s not. But his Headingley hundred did confirm him as the truest heir to Tendulkar’s crown of pure batsmanship. While that off-side dominance suggests that the all-round game doesn’t quite match, there is little in terms of weakness to pinpoint in his technique. Beyond Tendulkar, India’s other greats have been marked out by something additional to their work with bat in hand.
In opposite ways, Rahul Dravid and Virender Sehwag’s temperament were their greatest assets, the former immoveable and the latter unfazed by any sideways movement. Virat Kohli’s competitiveness carried him and India forward, redefining what they should expect of themselves and each other. Gill has his own princely image. Jaiswal, he just bats.
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