For Jaiswal, an opportunity to show attack isn’t his only defence

Kolkata: Yashasvi Jaiswal has scored heavily enough in Test cricket to have earned certainty, yet something about his record remains unconvincing. File image of Yashasvi Jaiswal plays a shot on day one of a Test cricket match between India and Afghanistan, in Mullanpur, Saturday.

(PTI)There is always another question attached to his name, another selection puzzle, another version of Indian cricket in which his place must be justified. His Test career has been remarkably productive, but it has unfolded in an environment where every return to the crease.

What Happened

Sri Lanka, however, presents a different examination. This isn’t Australia, where Jaiswal discovered how much punishment an opener must absorb before the rewards arrive.

• Sri Lanka, however, might ask Jaiswal how well he can adjust his instincts without losing them.

• He is young, extraordinarily gifted and already has enough body of work behind him to suggest that his ceiling is unusually high.

• There is a tendency to judge Jaiswal through the prism of what he might become.

Key Details

It isn’t England, where he had to contend with movement, unfamiliar conditions and the peculiar pressure of an English summer. Nor is it India, where he knows the surfaces, the rhythms and, crucially, the culture of playing spin almost instinctively.

• More importantly, a long innings — even one without the spectacular acceleration that has become his trademark — could reveal a different dimension of his game.

• It would show that Jaiswal can adapt his method to a part of the world where survival against spin is a prerequisite to dominance.

• A hundred here wouldn’t simply add another country to his record.

Why It Matters

Sri Lanka will ask him to do something subtler—to demonstrate that his aggressive, instinctive method can survive when spin becomes the front and centre of a bowling attack. That matters because Jaiswal’s greatest gift can also be his greatest vulnerability.

• Sri Lanka, therefore, offers useful context rather than another opportunity for Jaiswal to accumulate runs.

• In Tests, where he should theoretically have the clearest claim, he still operates under the expectation that the next phase of his development must be obvious.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by Hindustan Times as more details emerge