NEWS
Follow UsYashasvi Jaiswal has got himself off to the near perfect start possible in Ranji Trophy. Having made his First-Class debut in 2019, it was only in 2022, where the true potential of the left-hander has been unearthed by the Mumbai side.
Under the tutelage of Amol Muzumdar, the southpaw has been in ravishing form with scores of 35, 103, 100, 181 and 78 in his last five innings. And he’s just 20 but even at this young age, Jaiswal is ‘happy’ to take pressure and at the same time, admits to enjoying it.
"A final is different because you've a very different mindset. People who are close to me say so much stuff, because they want me to do well. They put pressure, of course. To be honest, I'm happy to take that pressure, I enjoy it," Jaiswal said after the day’s play.
"I go out with that mindset that I will do it. I trust and believe myself, that whenever I go out there, I'll do well," he said in a confident tone.
However, the left-hander was sad, missing out on yet another century for Mumbai, stating that cricket is all about experiencing the ‘highs and lows’.
"Yes, I'm a bit sad about it, but this is cricket. You have to experience both the good and the bad (part), and that's something I've learnt by now," Jaiswal said after the day's play.
"Because in cricket, things won't go how you want (things to go), but I'm trying my best to improve myself as a cricketer and as a human being," he said.
"Working (hard) every day is important, because then I'll become consistent. When I was dropped from playing XI in IPL, every day I was working with Zubin sir (Zubin Bharucha, director of cricket at RR) and training really well with support staffs like Raj Muni and Yogesh. Zubin sir was keeping me motivated all the time," he spoke with loads of gratitude.
On Madhya Pradesh’s move to open the bowling with Kumar Kartikeya, the left-hander said that Mumbai were ready for the move. In fact, he stated that Mumbai skipper Prithvi Shaw asked him to be ready for the left-arm spinner.
"Of course, we knew that he (Kartikeya) would bowl the first over. They were playing some trick, like trying some stuff to mentally disintegrate us, which I've seen them doing earlier," he said.
"For example, the keeper goes far back and the fast bowler walks up to the run-up but all along we knew that Kartikeya is going to bowl because Shaw bhai told me about it. We were literally ready.
"We didn't want them to think that we were not prepared. We had prepared enough. Whoever was going to bowl, I didn't care. I just needed to watch the ball," Jaiswal said.
(With inputs from PTI)
