Perth: Yashasvi Jaiswal lived in a canvas tent after leaving home aged 10 to chase his dream of becoming an Indian cricketer.
As a teenager sweating through hours-long batting sessions in a practice ‘net’ – a stifling space enclosed by plastic tarpaulin above his mentor’s rudimentary gymnasium in Mumbai’s seething northern suburbs – Yashasvi Jaiswal inscribed two simple words on his pads.
The youngest son of hardware store owner Bhupendra Jaiswal and his wife Kanchan, young Yashasvi’s life growing up in the regional village of Suriyawan (population around 20,000) in Uttar Pradesh’s famed carpet-weaving district of Bhadohi was cricket.
The ‘clubhouse’ was a canvas tent on the perimeter of the playing field that accommodated gardeners and ground staff who left Jaiswal in no doubt his ongoing tenancy was solely dependent on his capacity to score runs.
He would often go to sleep hungry rather than fight those he shared quarters with for meagre remains of the lentils, rice, flour and potatoes that formed the staff’s daily diet, and would wait longingly for Sundays when chicken appeared on the menu.
To sustain himself, Jaiswal found evening work with the owner of a roadside pani puri stall selling the popular deep-fried street snacks, but feared being noticed by his cricket teammates who had no idea as to his precarious circumstances.
He took part in as many corporate cricket matches as possible to supplement his earnings.
But by late 2013, around the time he turned 12, the dream was fading against the harsh light of Mumbai’s brutal reality even though he had vowed to his parents he would only return to Suriyawan once he established himself as a cricketer.
Jwala Singh, who two decades earlier made a cricket pilgrimage from the Uttar Pradesh village of Gorakhpur to Mumbai aged 13 in the unrealised hope of cracking the big time, was at Azad Maidan scouting for talent he could then hone at his Mumbai Cricket Club academy.
In one memorable game for Fort’s Anjuman Islam Urdu High School against Raja Shiva Vidyamandir (from Dadar), Jaiswal coupled an unbeaten innings of 319 with a match haul of 13 wickets.
He then became the youngest player to debut in the top division of Mumbai’s monsoon season Kanga League, where Tendulkar had also famously played at age 12.
A year later, Jaiswal made his first international trip to the UK with former India Test opener Dilip Vengsarkar’s Foundation which awarded him a scholarship worth 5000 rupees (around A$90) and a new bat.
By age 13, Jaiswal had supplemented his triple century with three double hundreds and a dozen scores of 150-plus, in addition to claiming upwards of 150 wickets with his spin bowling.
As he continued to rack up records in Mumbai’s under-16 and under-19 competitions, Jaiswal came to the attention of India’s selectors.
Jaiswal’s own celebrity rose exponentially when in October 2019 – nine months after making his first-class debut for Mumbai aged 17 – he became the youngest player to blaze a domestic one-day double hundred with 203 off 154 balls against Jharkhand.
Named player of the tournament at the men’s Under-19 World Cup in 2020 where he topped the runs tally, he earned his maiden IPL contract (worth around A$450,000) later that year when installed to open alongside Australia’s Steve Smith for Rajasthan Royals.
Jaiswal struck 209 (at Visakhapatnam) and 214 not out (Rajkot) against England, becoming only the third India batter after Vinod Kambli and Virat Kohli to post double hundreds in consecutive Tests.
“In any situation I can manage, nothing frightens me,” Jaiswal told cricket.com.au.
“I keep fighting, that’s my goal,” he said.
