You may, by now, have heard the origin story of Yashasvi Jaiswal, the 22-year-old Indian opener who has just crunched 712 runs in a series, the most inflicted on an England side by any Indian batter in Test history. No matter – it’s a tale that bears repeating. Jaiswal was just a slight and shy 10-year-old boy when he left his home district of Bhadohi, eastern Uttar Pradesh, with his father, and headed 1,000 miles south across India’s vast expanse to the bright lights of Mumbai in pursuit of a seemingly impossible dream – to make it as a professional cricketer in a country of 1.4 billion people where the game is revered as a quasi-religion.
His father left him with an uncle in Mumbai and headed back to the rest of the family. After just a few days the young Jaiswal left to live and work in a dairy shop before he seized the opportunity to live in a groundsman’s tent in the city’s famous Azad Maidan. Here he existed on a diet of glucose biscuits and the occasional free meal. More than that, he survived on a diet of cricket. With endless net practices and matches, Jaiswal set about honing his batting skills with an almost incomprehensible focus. “I have been alone a long, long, time,” Jaiswal told the Hindustan Times last year. “When my father left, it was very hard for me at first. Slowly, I got used to it. I got busy.”
