This was how Yashasvi Jaiswal, India’s left-hand opener, practiced ahead of the final ODI between India and South Africa in Vizag. Load up, back and across, defend. Load up, back and across, square cut or upper-cut. Load up, back and across, pull stroke. The narrative was crystal clear: Jaiswal was pursuing excellence while facing a throwdown specialist and a net bowler. And his eyes were set on upskilling his horizontal-bat shots.
So, how did Jaiswal go about his business in the practice session? Among the three shots he played repeatedly, Jaiswal seemed most comfortable with the pull stroke. One of those even went soaring over the top of the nets. To assuage the fears of Jaiswal’s fans, it wasn’t as if he looked out of sorts when he cracked the cut. But he couldn’t connect with a few of the deliveries offered with width. After about 30–45 minutes of intense practice, Jaiswal took his helmet off and had a long chat with Gautam Gambhir, the head coach.
If you analyse Jaiswal’s trigger movement closely, he is essentially a back-foot player. The only caveat is that when he first came on the scene, he preferred to play the hybrid pull – the modern way of clearing the front leg and aiming a hoick across the line. As expected of a quality player, Jaiswal realised he needed to upgrade his game with more of a traditional pull stroke.
He has definitely added a few nuts and bolts to that particular shot. To exemplify the point, just observe how he moved across towards off stump and pulled Nandre Burger, with the short ball ending up somewhere on his right side in Raipur. In this context, enough credit must also go to Marco Jansen for employing a fine short ball to dismiss the left-hand batter in the same game.
For a moment, spool back in time to gauge the reason for Jaiswal eyeing improvement in certain areas of his game. He has been dismissed by both inside edges and outside edges while attempting the square cut. In England, he was beaten quite a few times when he brought out the cut shot.
Of course, Jansen has troubled him by hitting a hard length. The left-arm pacer is all set once more to bang it in short in the crucial third match, tempting the left-hander to play horizontal-bat shots. Jaiswal not only has the ammunition to hurt the opposition with his brand of cricket, but he also possesses the sheer passion to improve his game by bringing in new updates. His art of repetition in the nets was akin to a sculptor perfecting the statue in his workshop.
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