With Yashasvi Jaiswal scoring his maiden ODI ton, Gautam Gambhir sees future success for the opener if he can only figure out pacing of his innings. Jaiswal made the most of his chance stepping in for regular opener after captain Shubman Gill was out injured, and offers selectors options.
While Gambhir was adamant that captain Gill and vice captain Shreyas Iyer will reclaim their positions, and with Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli showing no signs of slowing down and cruising in chases, Jaiswal & Co will need to prove they offer more than the doyens in the top order. For that, Gambhir, obviously, had sagacious advice.
“In one-day format, you need to know the template you want to play,” Gambhir told reporters after India beat South Africa 2-1 following the nine wicket win. “When you come into white-ball cricket from red-ball cricket, you think you have to bat aggressively. But you don’t need to bat aggressively in one-day cricket, because you can split it into 30 overs and 20 overs,” he added of pacing the innings.
“If you play 30 overs like one-day cricket – and the quality that Jaiswal has, if he can bat till 30 overs – there is no doubt he will be close to a hundred. Even after that, you have 20 overs left, which you can look at as a T20 match. It is only about finding a template. This was just Jaiswal’s fourth game. The moment he figures out which tempo he needs to bat in one-day cricket, the sky is the limit,” Gambhir added.
Jaiswal himself spoke of how often he had spoken to Rohit Sharma about settling into a tempo. When asked if it was a big burden off the chest on registering his maiden ODI hundred,Jaiswal said in post-match, “Yes, of course. I really enjoyed it. I’m really grateful and blessed. We have been chatting a lot about how we can play and how we can set the target and what tempo we can play. So, I’m trying to understand. I had starts in last two games but I couldn’t convert. So, we have been speaking how we can convert this and how we balance this inning. I was just thinking how I can balance the inning. So, sometimes I need to be attacking and sometimes I was thinking, okay, maybe I’ll take a single or I’ll run the game. So, that was my plan and it was pretty good,” Jaiswal said.
On curbing his aggression, Jaiswal said, “I have to control my thoughts on where I can play, what shot I can play and how I can play as deep as possible. And with keeping that in my mind that if it requires, I need to go after the bowlers.”
The likes of Jaiswal and Gill are lucky to learn from chase masters like Sharma and Kohli and the Mumbai opener spoke of Kohli helping him by setting small targets. “Virat paaji, the minute he came, he started playing a lot of shots and we kept chatting as well. He kept giving me small targets that I need to focus on. So, it was helping me towards my goal as well. So, I really enjoyed it,” he said.
Sanjay Bangar speaking on JioHotstar said, there were other ways in which Jaiswal could benefit from his ODI opportunities – in dealing with ups and downs of international cricket. “More than this particular innings of Yashasvi Jaiswal, look at it from an Indian cricket point of view. He is an established Test opener. Anyone who has batted at the top knows how hard it is to be consistent in Test cricket. But if you also open in white-ball cricket, you learn to handle the ups and downs of international cricket better. It keeps you in touch, keeps you playing against international bowlers, and you get those vital performances,” Bangar explained. “That helps you take form from one format to another. Right now, he may not play regularly with Rohit opening. But once Rohit is done, I clearly see Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill benefiting from batting in the top order in white-ball cricket. That will also help their Test cricket game.”
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