India’s 22-year-old opening batsman Yashasvi Jaiswal is eyeing to break the records of two Indian cricketing legends- Sunil Gavaskar and Virat Kohli when Rohit Sharma’s side welcome England for the 4th Test in Ranchi in 2 days.
Jaiswal will look to break the records of most runs in a single bilateral series as well as most runs against their English counterparts in a red-ball series.
No other batter than Yashasvi Jaiswal has been in better form as he has already smacked 2 back-to-back double centuries across the last two Test matches in Vishakhapatnam and Rajkot.
He is turning out to be the most prolific batter from both the teams which have some experienced names, mostly in England’s camp like Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, and Ben Stokes among others.
As for India, the most experienced batter in the team is of course Rohit Sharma, and after him in the batting front is Ravindra Jadeja and Shubman Gill.
After the exclusion of Shreyas Iyer from the last 3 Tests and KL Rahul’s absence due to injury in the 3rd, the batting order got a bit more in-experienced but regardless, the home team has done very well without them, gaining a 2-1 lead already.
Jaiswal eyeing to break Gavaskar’s 700+ run tally in a single series
Former Indian batting legend and 1983 World Cup winner, Sunil Gavaskar before he won the 1983 Cricket World Cup under Kapil Dev’s captaincy at Lord’s, had become the first Indian batter to amass over 700 runs in a single bilateral series against the West Indies twice in 1970/71 and 1978/79 series. No Indian batter after him be it Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid among others have been able to break it to this day.
At the moment, given his form as well as rhythm, Yashasvi Jaiswal looks like the one to break it after these many decades. Gavaskar had scored 774 and 732 in 1970/71 and 1978/79 respectively and Jaiswal will need to add another 229 runs to his tally of 545 runs that he has scored across the 3 Tests.
The UP-born batter has scores of 80, 15, 209, 17, 10, and 224 across 6 innings. Whenever Jaiswal has scored over 100 runs in an innings, the hosts haven’t lost and the Indian team management will be expecting him to do something similar in the 4th Test as well.
Yashasvi Jaiswal has been nothing short of a sensation already in his short Test career which began in July 2023 at West Indies where he had amassed 171 in only his debut international red-ball outing.
After Gavaskar, Yashasvi Jaiswal eyeing to hunt down Virat Kohli’s 2016/17 tally
On his way to Sunil Gavaskar’s record, Yashasvi Jaiswal will first have to make sure he crosses Virat Kohli’s run tally of 655 runs he scored against England in the 2016/17 Test series, which is also the most by an Indian against them in a red-ball series.
That’s not it, Jaiswal will become the highest Indian run-scorer in a 21st Century Test series, which is also held by Kohli with 692 runs.
Lastly, Yashasvi will have the chance to become the joint-fastest Indian batsman to amass 1000 Test runs, which is currently held by Vinod Kambli who did so in 14 innings. Jaiswal is at 861 runs from 13 innings and to overtake Kambli, the left-hand batter will need to score a 150 at least. Can he achieve these records in Ranchi? Time will tell.