A knock as epic as 209, scored by Yashasvi Jaiswal, is bound to spark comparisons with some of the legends of the game. On Friday, former India cricketer Aakash Chopra compared the youngster to Sir Don Bradman after the youngster ended Day 1 unbeaten on 179, in a lone battle against the England bowling attack in the second Test in Visakhapatnam. With Yashasvi converting his overnight score to a record-breaking double-century on the second morning, cricket experts from India went ga-ga over the achievement, comparing the opener to the legendary Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag.
Yashasvi batted for 290 deliveries across four sessions, which included being in the middle through the entire course of 93 overs on Day 1, while the rest of the Indian batters struggled to convert their starts. The second-best score was a knock of 34 from Shubman Gill.
After finishing on an unbeaten 179 on the opening day, the most scored by an Indian batter on Day 1 of a Test match against England and the second-highest against an opposition at home, Yashasvi notched up his maiden double century on Saturday to become the third youngest Indian to the feat. He also became the first left-handed batter from India to score a double century in the format since 2009.
Speaking on Colors Cineplex on the 22-year-old’s meteoric rise, former India cricketer Parthiv Patel, on exemplifying the rarity of a double ton in Test cricket, pointed out that even Sachin did not manage to achieve it this early in his career. The former India batter had scored the first of his six double hundreds, in 1999, almost 10 years after his debut.
“Yashasvi Jaiswal used to see the lights at the Wankhede and wanted to hear the applause for him, and we saw that happening in the IPL when he struck a century in the same Wankhede Stadium. However, Test cricket is a different thing. He had already struck a century in Test cricket but today we got to see a double century, which is not scored regularly. Sachin paaji took a long time to score a double century in Test cricket and he has made it early in his career,” Parthiv said.
One of the biggest factors in Yashasvi’s knock was his fearlessness, as exemplified through six he scored over long-on to bring up his second career century and the sweep shot he played to score a boundary and notch up the double ton. The characteristic ignited comparisons with Sehwag.
Former India cricketer Pragyan Ojha did see a point on why the comparisons were being drawn, but quickly pointed out that while Sehwag did it consistently, it is still early days for Yashasvi in international cricket.
“It can be said that he is playing fearless cricket. However, if you talk about Virender Sehwag, it’s not about one, two or three matches. You talk about how his entire career has been,” he said. “So this is just the start. We will see how he plays going forward. We will pray that he plays like this but it remains to be seen how he keeps the expectations aside and attacks fearlessly. Sehwag did that consistently for many years. So I feel it’s a little early.”
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