Yashasvi Jaiswal struck a match-winning knock against Punjab Kings on Saturday at the Wankhede to get back the Rajasthan Royals to winning ways after they had lost their last two matches.
Jaiswal, who was dropped after the first three matches early in the season, returned with a blockbuster inning, scoring 68 runs off 41 balls, his strike rate being 165, and set up the platform along with Jos Buttler for the likes of Samson, Padikkal, and Hetmyer in RR’s chase of 190. which they achieved in the last over of the chase.
The 20-year-old left-hander thumped 9 classy boundaries and a couple of sweetly-timed sixes in his enterprising knock. For the first four overs, he just watched the Jos Buttler mayhem from the non-striker’s end and then it was Samson who continued the attacking momentum.
After the powerplay, Yashasvi Jaiswal then took down PBKS’ weaker links, the likes of Rahul Chahar, Sandeep Sharma and Rishi Dhawan were all clattered disdainfully by the youngster. Sandeep Sharma, in particular, took the brunt of Jaiswal’s fury.
Impressed by the 20-year-old’s sizzling effort with the bat, former India cricketer and now commentator Irfan Pathan wrote a tweet that indeed summed out Jaiswal’s outing versus Punjab Kings. Pathan tweeted: “Yashasvi Jaiswal was fearless in his come back match. Well played young man.”
Here, check out the former all-rounder’s special tweet:
Yashasvi Jaiswal was fearless in his come back match. Well played young man
— Irfan Pathan (@IrfanPathan) May 7, 2022
Having impressed and shown maturity in his stays last year in the IPL, the Royals retained Jaiswal for 4 crores. However, he was always going to be under the pressure for his position in the eleven because the Royals also bought Devdutt Padikkal in the mega-auction.
Although Jaiswal started the tournament opening alongside Buttler but was dropped after failures in the first three matches with Padikkal then slotted to open. Now, upon his successful return, Jaiswal revealed that he was being motivated by Zubin Bharucha, RR’s Head of cricket.
Speaking at the post-match presentation, Yashasvi Jaiswal said, “To be honest, I didn’t know I’ll be the Man of the Match. It’s an amazing feeling whenever I go and bat, with all my pride I go and bat. (Favourite shot) I think the one I hit Rahul Chahar over the covers. I just tried to keep it simple – good cricketing shots.
“I want to dedicate this innings to Zubin sir (Zubin Bharucha). He has helped me a lot during all the times, whenever I was sitting with him, when I was down. He has been pushing me always. It’s been a pleasure to perform like this. He has motivated me a lot, pushing me everyday like ‘you can do it, you’ll do it, just keep working hard.’ I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, I’ll try my best.”
