New Delhi: Playing a single shot 300 times a day in an isolated facility in Talegaon, working with a baseball coach to perfect the power game and painful blisters on his palms after continuous hours of range-hitting: all this and more went into the making of Yashasvi Jaiswal as the next big thing in Indian cricket. It was Rajasthan Royals' High Performance Director and former Mumbai batter Zubin Bharucha, who played a significant role in his rise after he spotted him the during the IPL trials.
It did not take Bharucha long to realise that he had special talent before him. Just one shot played by Jaiswal was enough to catch Bharucha's attention. "He had come from U-19 India but IPL is a very different level. He came for the trial and I don't remember who the bowler was but he walked across stumps and played a flick behind the square, first ball," Bharucha told PTI during an interaction.
"I am a great believer in first instincts. I didn't want to see more of him because I had seen that arrogance and unimaginable confidence level you want to see in a batter." Bharucha then went on to play a significant role in Jaiswal's transition from a precocious 18-year-old talent to a player of international class as he became the 17th Indian batter to hit a hundred on Test debut on Thursday in West Indies.
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"There is a saying that it takes a village to make a champion. There are many people who have contributed in Yashasvi's journey so far and I just happen to be one of them. He came from a place where he had very little. He certainly knows where he comes from. He's very clear that he has risen from nothing and he is conscious of what he is doing now and where he feels he is going," said Bharucha, who played 17 first-class games for a very strong Mumbai side that had Ravi Shastri, Sanjay Manjrekar and Sachin Tendulkar.
The training at Royals
To make it to the next level, sacrifices are required and in case of Jaiswal, it was about living in isolation in Maharashtra's Talegaon village where Rajasthan Royals had an academy. "Talegaon is 90 minutes away from Nagpur. The idea was to isolate him, so when he goes there, there is nothing but practice on his mind. Even during COVID, he was living there and practising and there was no halt in his in his progress even during that."
Bharucha revealed the training philosophy they followed at the Royals academy. "We had a very clear formula. Whether it's 300 cut shots or 300 reverse sweeps or 300 conventional sweeps, we will not stop until we achieve a certain level of consistency with that particular shot.
"We take the game out of equation from our training. Whether you play a Test match or a T20, the ball will fall in the same place but how you approach it and how you work on it was our objective. If you're not playing the cut shot very well on a particular day. then we'll focus on the cut shot only.
"It has always been about eliminating the weaknesses. He didn't have an on-side game and we really worked hard on that aspect so that it benefits him," Bharucha said. The Royals also deployed baseball mechanics in developing Yashasvis power game. "We have worked extensively on the baseball mechanics. We have brought all those mechanics to our batsmen, in terms of how they strike the ball. He (Jaiswal) was doing something that was not conducive to generating power, which is bending of the elbow at the point of impact with the ball.
"So we started this process of striking the ball a bit like baseball batter, almost two years ago and it was not natural to him. Slowly he got the hang of it. He has still got a bent elbow at the point of impact but certainly it is still not as much as it was when we started.
"So, as I said, we have eliminated that aspect and hence the power generation has been considerable. We asked him to do 200 lobs every day. Lobs means using bats and balls of different weight and size to hit every ball to 100 meters. It is not easy. You will see blisters on his palm. He has endured pain to achieve what he has," said Bharucha.
He also recollected how they got a side-arm slinging throwdown expert to bowl him at 155 click to counter Jofra Arche during IPL. "As soon as Archer was picked in Mumbai Indians, we found a guy, who could hurl the ball at a speed of 155kmph with a sidearm throw. We told him to target his head in nets. There are not many batsmen who will be able to take that leap of faith facing such bowling.
"So when we are willing to put ourselves in that position every day at practice to push the boundaries, you see the result starts coming and you saw the results starts coming as he went after Archer in this year's IPL. Being vulnerable and having accepted failures is one part of our success story." (PTI)
