Mumbai: When Yashasvi Jaiswal is at the crease, buckle your seatbelts and wait with bated breath.
The 22-year-old opener doesn’t believe in taking time to judge the pitch and quality of bowling before opening out. He goes out with an ultra-aggressive mindset and looks to dominate the opposition from ball 1 – be it in Tests, ODIs or T20s.
That is exactly what happened at Harare Sports Club on Sunday.
Asked to bat first in the fifth and final T20 International against Zimbabwe, the left-hander went out to the middle with skipper Shubman Gill, and slog-swept rival captain Sikandar Raza’s first ball for six.
It turned out to be a no-ball.
As Raza re-bowled the delivery and pushed it wide of off stump, Jaiswal adjusted quickly and thumped it over the bowler’s head for a straight six.
The first legal ball of the match had fetched India 13 runs!
It was the first time in a T20 International that a batter had scored 12 runs off the game’s first legal delivery.
Raza had his revenge three balls later by flattening Jaiswal’s leg stump, but the swashbuckling opener had set the tone for Team India.
India posted 167/6, with Sanju Samson scoring 58 off 45 balls. Mukesh Kumar then bagged 4/22 to bowl out Zimbabwe for 125. The 42-run win handed India a 4-1 series triumph after they lost the opener.
Earlier this year, Jaiswal had smashed records in the home Test series against England. He went on a six-hitting spree as he notched up back-to-back double hundreds.
He equalled legendary Pakistani allrounder Wasim Akram’s record of most sixes in a Test Innings (12) and also became the first cricketer to strike more than 20 overboundaries in a single series.
