Yashasvi Jaiswal

Yashasvi Jaiswal became a prominent name in Indian cricket after a stellar Under-19 World Cup held in 2020 where he was awarded the man of the tournament. He piled on more than 400 runs in the tournament and the fact that he has to struggle a lot to reach that level made his success even sweeter for him. Yashasvi has had to deal with severe hardships during his junior days of playing cricket when he was not selected for the Indian U-19 side. 

Jaiswal was born in Uttar Pradesh but the hunger to play cricket and aspiration to play for the Indian team brought him to Mumbai where he had to stroll grounds to the ground in search of opportunities to play cricket. His cricketing journey is the perfect anecdote of an Indian story as Jaiswal has come up from a very humble background and fought his way to the top with sheer talent and determination. 

At 17, the talented top-order batter made his first-class in the 2018-19 Ranji Trophy season and made his List-A debut during India's U-23 tour of Bangladesh, later in September. Jaiswal’s growth in the domestic and age-group levels meant that he was selected for the U-19 World Cup held in 2020. But even after selection into the Indian U-19 team, he was not successful from the word go and had to do everything in a harder way. A century in the Asia Cup preceding the World Cup helped him clinch a spot for the U-19 World Cup.

Like various other U-19 talents in the past, Jaiswal too was picked by Rajasthan Royals based on immense talent and expectations of their improvement into a star in future years. Jaiswal was bought for Rs 2.4 crore which is a lot considering the kind of struggle he has to deal with in pursuit of becoming a cricketer. The youngster made his IPL debut against MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings and won a million hearts when he greeted the legendary wicketkeeper with a “namaste” to welcome Dhoni on the crease. With the bat, Jaiswal didn’t see much success in his first IPL season as he found it difficult and was foundering. He got benched after failing to impress in his first three matches. 

The youngster went back to domestic circles and bettered himself for the toughest T20 league. Jaiswal was sensational during the 2020 Vijay Hazare season, where he topped the run-charts for Mumbai with a total of 564 runs, including three centuries and a fifty. It was followed with an equally impressive 2021 domestic season, just ahead of the 2021 IPL edition. At just a mere age of 19, Jaiswal is taunted to be a golden boy who has a lot to offer and become the flagbearer of Indian cricket in the coming future. 

(As of June 2021)