Yashasvi Jaiswal

Yashasvi Jaiswal (born December 28, 2001, Suriyawan, Uttar Pradesh, India) is an Indian professional cricket player. He plays franchise cricket for the Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and represented Mumbai in Indian domestic cricket from 2018 to 2025. He transferred from Mumbai to Goa for the start of the 2025–26 season. Jaiswal is a left-handed opening batter. Among other achievements, he holds three world records: he is the youngest cricketer to score a double century in List A cricket, the batter with the most sixes in a single Test series, and the batter with the most sixes in Test cricket in a calendar year.

Early life

Jaiswal is the fourth of six children of Bhupendra Jaiswal, a hardware store owner, and Kanchan Jaiswal, a homemaker. The family resided in the town of Suriyawan, Uttar Pradesh, in northern India. His older brother Tejasvi Jaiswal plays domestic cricket for Tripura. At age 10 Yashasvi Jaiswal asked his father if he could move across the country to Mumbai to try to become a cricket player. He was taken to stay with his uncle Santosh, but Santosh did not have room at his home for an additional child. Instead, Jaiswal was given room and board at a dairy shop, where he was expected to work. This arrangement was short-lived, however, because he did not work enough to satisfy the shop owners. By his own admission, he would play cricket, come home, and sleep.

Jaiswal’s uncle next persuaded the owners of the Muslim United cricket club to let Jaiswal stay in the team’s tent on the Azad Maidan, a sports ground. For the next few years, Jaiswal lived in that tent and used public toilets. He played cricket with borrowed kits, and, when he was not playing cricket, he earned money by helping food vendors. Deliverance from this hardship came in December 2013, when he was turning 12. Coach Jwala Singh of the Mumbai Cricket Club noticed Jaiswal’s talent and began mentoring him. Singh moved Jaiswal into a chawl (tenement house), fed him, and enrolled him in Singh’s cricket academy. The coach eventually became the boy’s legal guardian.

Youth career

Once Jaiswal was in training and sponsored, his nutrition and performance improved, and he almost immediately began distinguishing himself. In 2014 he won awards for best all-rounder, best innings, and outstanding performance from the Mumbai School Sports Association (MSSA). But it was the 2015 Giles Shield Cricket Tournament, featuring boys 14 or younger from Mumbai schools, that first put Jaiswal in the limelight: in a multiday match, he hit a record 319 runs and claimed 13 wickets. That achievement earned him a spot in the Limca Book of Records. Later that year he joined an exposure trip to England with the cricket academy run by former Indian batter Dilip Vengsarkar.

Jaiswal was selected for the Mumbai under-16 (U-16) team and later the India U-19 national team. He led the latter squad to victory in the 2018 U-19 Asia Cup competition, where he was named player of the tournament. The following year, he continued to impress, scoring 173 runs off 220 balls in a youth Test match against South Africa in February and finishing fourth on the run scorers’ list in a youth tri-series against England and Bangladesh in July and August. In December 2019 Jaiswal was selected to play for India in the International Cricket Council’s (ICC’s) U-19 World Cup of 2020, hosted by South Africa. He finished that series as the highest run scorer and was named player of the tournament, although India lost in the final.

Domestic and franchise cricket

Jaiswal was called up to play senior-level domestic cricket at age 16. He made his first-class cricket debut for Mumbai versus Chhattisgarh, on January 7, 2019, in the Ranji Trophy competition, scoring 20 runs in a low-scoring match. He made his List A debut against the same opponent, on September 28, 2019, in the Vijay Hazare Trophy tournament. Jaiswal was soon on a rich streak of form, scoring three centuries in five List A games, including a double century—203 runs off just 154 balls—against Jharkhand on October 16, 2019. This innings made him the youngest double centurion in the history of List A cricket, at 17 years 292 days. Jaiswal was rewarded with a call-up to the India B squad for the 2019–20 Deodhar Trophy competition, in which he played a key role in India B’s winning the series.

As a result of these performances, the Rajasthan Royals bought Jaiswal in December 2019 at the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction for 20.4 million Indian rupees (about $327,000). In his first season with the Royals, he played only 3 games and scored at less than a run a ball, which was attributed to a lack of practice during the COVID-19 lockdown. In 2021 he played 10 games and scored his first half-century, in just 19 balls, against the Chennai Super Kings, making him the second fastest uncapped player at the time to score a half-century, just behind Ishan Kishan’s 17 balls. The Royals retained Jaiswal for the 2022 season, which made him the second youngest player to date to be retained. He scored two half-centuries that season.

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The franchise’s faith was rewarded in 2023: Jaiswal scored 625 runs in 14 matches and ended the season as the fifth highest run scorer across teams. This achievement included his first IPL century, an innings of 124 runs off 62 balls against the Mumbai Indians. On May 11 Jaiswal entered the record books again, this time by hitting a half-century off only 13 balls against the Kolkata Knight Riders, which beat the previous record of 14 jointly held by Pat Cummins and KL Rahul. He added another century and half-century in IPL 2024 as the Royals finished third.

International cricket

In June 2023 Jaiswal received his first call-up to India’s Test squad, for a tour of the West Indies. The following month he made his international debut, in the first Test, scoring 171 runs in India’s only innings and thereby becoming the 17th Indian batter to score a century on his Test debut. Moreover, he was named player of the match. On the same tour, Jaiswal made his Twenty20 International (T20I) debut and scored a half-century in just his second game in the format, on August 12 against the West Indies. He was next included on a second-string Indian team that won the gold medal in the cricket event at the 2023 Asian Games in October. In a game against Nepal at the tournament, he scored his first T20I hundred.

In early 2024 the England cricket team toured India for a five-match Test series. Jaiswal finished the series as the overall top run scorer. His first Test double century, in the second match of the series, made him the third youngest Indian to achieve the feat. In the next Test, he added another double, which made him only the third Indian to score Test doubles in consecutive matches. The latter innings also included 12 sixes, equaling Wasim Akram’s world record for most sixes in a Test innings. Jaiswal finished the series with 26 sixes—yet another record. On November 23 that year he broke the world record for most Test sixes scored by a player in a calendar year, notching a 34th six during the first match of the Test series between India and Australia. Jaiswal finished that series as India’s highest run scorer.