Yashasvi Jaiswal, Jasprit Bumrah and Virat Kohli. Photo: PTI
Ask any self-respecting international cricketer and they will tell you how important the second season is after a stellar first season.
If sky-high expectations are one aspect of it, the other part is the opponent’s familiarity with their game and sufficient on-field material available for analysis.
As Yashasvi Jaiswal aims to beat the Blues in the second season, he can count himself lucky to be able to face Jasprit Bumrah in the nets, the best in the business whom he is keen to face before the real action begins.
During Monday’s net session, Bumrah repeatedly took down the Mumbai youngster, often sending him somersaulting on the ground. Jaiswal will hope that his inconsistent form in the nets is not repeated in the opening Test against Bangladesh, which begins here on September 19.
With 10 Tests under his belt this season, Jaiswal comes with a huge reputation as one of the future megastars in the making, having scored over 1000 runs in his first 9 Tests, with over 700 against England in a single series.
But Jaiswal’s critics will surely point out that in those nine matches, there were a couple against South Africa on the bouncy tracks of Centurion and Newlands (Cape Town) where he didn’t exactly feel comfortable with the pace and bounce.
While the England series, in which he played with a lot of slow bowlers, was a huge success, Jaiswal’s real test will be five Tests in Australia later this year.
And before he faces Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, Bangladesh’s two tall, quick merchants, Taskin Ahmed and Nahid Rana, will also test him for pace and bounce.
Jaiswal’s first-class season hasn’t exactly started well with two low scores in the Duleep Trophy, where Avesh Khan and Khaleel Ahmed troubled him with extra bounce, something that is still a work in progress.
That day, Bumrah, who bowled a lot to Jaiswal twice, got him clean down and hit the outside edge of his bat several times. Bumrah managed to get the ball away from Jaiswal, who was outpaced and outswung. He certainly didn’t look to be at his best and it wasn’t nice to see his stumps flying all over the place as he was seen playing with heavy hands trying to push hard at the deliveries.
In fact, he was worried about all three things: pace, bounce and swing. He didn’t seem to be sure where his off-stump was.
And it wasn’t just Bumrah, even net bowlers like Simarjeet Singh, Gurnoor Brar and Gurjanpreet Singh managed to get past his outside edge time and again.
At one point, the legendary Virat Kohli was seen talking to him trying to explain where he was going wrong.
Both Kohli and Jaiswal took turns and batted for almost an hour, facing around 50 balls.
During this session, Kohli unleashed his trademark cover drive and on-drive.
As for Jaiswal, he was trying to leave a lot of long balls, especially those to Bumrah.
With the practice field made of red dirt, the court offered a fresh bounce and the play shots were not fluid.
Bumrah also managed to put Kohli in some trouble, with some of his deliveries heading towards his pads.
After Bumrah finished his spell of nearly five overs, both batsmen faced the practice bowlers.
Jaiswal was more comfortable against the bowlers as he sometimes swung back to play the square cut.
And there was Rishabh Pant, who always treated left-handed bowlers’ deliveries with great disdain as he bowled at the Ajit Rams and M Siddharths with ease.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First published: September 17, 2024 | 9:06 am IS
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