Yashasvi Jaiswal is a passionate young man. It shows when he is out there in the middle, either with the bat in hand or fielding. He doesn’t shy away from taking the opposition’s best bowler on — he sledging Mitchell Starc during the Australia tour earlier this year was the biggest proof. What was largely a lesser-known fact till the third day’s play of the fifth Test against England was that Jaiswal could snap at a senior teammate not once but twice.
Yashasvi Jaiswal was only 14 when Karun Nair made the historic 303 against England in a Test match but that didn’t stop the left-handed opening batter from letting his senior partner know of his mistakes. Jaiswal lost his cool and yelled at Karun Nair twice. On both occasions, Nair was at fault, and Jaiswal made sure the 33-year-old knew about it.
The first instance was when Jaiswal was batting at 95. In the middle of the 49th over of India’s second innings, England put a fine third man trying to trap Jaiswal if he went for the upper cut. Jaiswal was miffed at Karun Nair for not pointing that out to him. It is generally the non-striker who points out field changes behind the striker, but Nair seemed to have missed it, and that didn’t please Jaiswal.
In the next over, Jaiswal, on 97, punched the ball through the off side and wanted to come back for the third to complete his century but Nair, slightly slow off the blocks, decided to settle for a couple. Jaiswal yelled at Karun for converting the two into three.
Jaiswal didn’t have to wait long to get to his century. He got there with a single and leapt in the air to celebrate his sixth Test match hundred. He got a couple of chances early on, but it was a gutsy innings nonetheless.
Three overs later, Karun Nair’s agonising stay in the middle came to an end when Gus Atkinson got one to kick off from a length to find the outside edge of the right-hander’s bat. He was dismissed for 17 off 52 balls.
On the fourth ball of the 58th over, Jaiswal slammed a boundary, which brought his team’s 250 in the innings.
In the 65th over, with the score of 273, Jaiswal (118 runs in 164 balls) was dismissed by Josh Tongue. Following Jaiswal’s dismissal, the team’s wicketkeeper-batter Dhruv Jurel came out to bat. He joined left-hand batter Ravindra Jadeja at the crease.
India reached 300 runs just before Tea, as Jurel scored 13 runs in an over bowled by Tongue.
