England the next stop in Jaiswal's audacious journey

Open trials are a wonderfully democratic notion. A place where you can bypass the need for local loyalties and connections. Especially when said trials are being conducted by an IPL team. However, in reality you have a short window of time to impress while facing bowlers you most certainly have not seen before, or heard of even.

Most players are invited to trials on word-of-mouth recommendations from local rumour mills that get excited seeing young talent. One such boy at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai was then 16-year-old Yashasvi Jaiswal, yet to have played for the Mumbai senior side. His journey to the trials was astounding: leaving home, a village in Uttar Pradesh, at the age of 10 to live alone in big, bad Mumbai, starting out lodging in a tent at Azad Maidan.

Nobody cares for such stories at these trials or any selection. You do so much yet you are still just one of hundreds who have turned up, hoping to catch the eye of a scout or a coach. The first ball Jaiswal faced in the nets, he moved across and ramped. This audacity, this courage, struck a chord with the Rajasthan Royals (RR).

There's nothing to say Jaiswal wouldn't have made it through the traditional route of playing for his state side - after all, he had made it this far doing the same, and would go on to play for India Under-19 before turning 17 - but this is how it transpired. RR happen to be an anomalous T20 franchise that is format agnostic at their High Performance Centre in Talegaon in Maharashtra. It might not be all philanthropy. They realise kids in India don't grow up playing a lot of T20 and come with little understanding of the format. So it is better to eliminate errors and have kids expand their games holistically rather than focus on a format they don't yet know the grammar of.

In Jaiswal, RR struck gold. His hunger and drive were comparable to the greats of the game. The courage was evident in his audacious journey from Bhadohi to Bombay. This level of ambition and RR's investment in him were a match made in batting heaven. RR's High Performance Centre is led by former Mumbai opener Zubin Bharucha, whose technique and understanding of the game is highly regarded by no less than Sunil Gavaskar. They went about dismantling Jaiswal's game and then putting it back together.

When Jaiswal played for India Under-19, former Test captain Rahul Dravid was in charge of India's development squads. Even if he didn't tour with every Under-19 or A team, he was the one who established the structure and oversaw the feeder systems to India's senior teams. He remembers Jaiswal as exceptionally talented but someone who needed improvement to do well at senior levels. He was not in the league of, say, Rohit Sharma or Virat Kohli before him.

When Jaiswal made it as a standby batter for India's squad for the final of the 2023 World Test Championship, Dravid was the head coach. He saw a much-improved batter. "Some of the practice pitches leading into the Test match were really spicy," Dravid tells ESPNcricinfo. "It had been raining, and they were not well prepared. And he was willing to go out there and bat against whoever. Side-armers, [Mohammed] Shami or [Mohammed] Siraj or whoever. He just wanted to bat in those conditions, which for me and our other coaches was, 'Wow, he wants to learn, he wants to improve. He wants to get better.' From the time that I saw him at Under-19 to then, just his range of shots had improved."

Those who saw Jaiswal and Bharucha work in the intervening years talk of an obsessive streak. There were days when Jaiswal played 300 reverse sweeps to a variety of deliveries: different angles, height of release, pace, length, line. Any shot that needed work was met with similar dedication. There were days when they would practise just the sequencing of reverse sweep, orthodox sweep and the single down the ground. Or just the side-arm replicating bouncers at extreme pace from different angles. Often he left the nets with bloodied palms.

Jaiswal was still a relatively blank slate so they could work on developing his ability to play shots to where fielders weren't, and did so relatively safely. The idea was to face a variety of angles and deliveries in a single session. Sometimes he would face close to 100 overs of throwdowns and over-arm deliveries in a day.

Skill was only part of it. This is a challenge to the notion that India has so many people playing cricket that they should automatically dominate the world. Amid such high competition, only the most desperate make it, but they also tend to be those who have had a hard childhood, which results in their desperation to succeed. In Jaiswal's case, the RR medical team found that his body had been deprived of nutrients most kids his age should grow up with.

It is again a testament to Jaiswal's determination that he has kind of caught up when it once looked impossible. Only deeper into his career will we know how well he has progressed. Jaiswal became extremely diligent about nutrition, more deliberate in how he trained and worked out, realising this could be the difference between a good innings and a big innings, or 50 Tests and 100 Tests.

If anything, Jaiswal might be a little too absorbed by his game. Those who have observed him describe him as a maverick, but one who can at times get caught up in his own head. While it is what gives him laser focus, it has the potential to ruffle those around him. That aspect of his personality is also something he has had to work on.

By the time Jaiswal made his Test debut, his hunger for big innings was apparent. The West Indies attack wasn't great in Dominica but they were disciplined on a slow pitch and slower outfield. The hosts had been bowled out for 150 so there was time in the game and Jaiswal made sure he nailed this opportunity. He went into stumps on 40 off 73, but completely shut shop the next morning when Jason Holder and Kemar Roach tested him. He added just seven in nearly an hour and ended up with 171 on debut.

When conditions and match situations called for it, Jaiswal dominated England in only his third series, charging James Anderson, scoring two double-centuries, hitting 32 sixes. This ability to adapt his game to the demands of the conditions and the match situation is what most impressed Dravid, who exists between tolerating the notion of natural games and appreciating those who play the situation.

"They're all an ability to say I want to score runs, I like scoring runs, I know how to score runs and I'll do whatever it takes to score runs," Dravid says. "Sometimes bat aggressively, sometimes bat defensively, sometimes play from middle stump, sometimes play from outside leg stump. That's a really good trait."

In Australia, on tracks with excessive seam movement, Jaiswal's usual set-up on middle stump followed by a shuffle was exploited by Mitchell Starc to get him on middle and leg. Jaiswal was quick to correct it by starting from outside leg. He was the first Indian batter to walk at the bowlers without compromising on back-foot shots. He was the second highest run-getter in the series, India's best batter by a distance, and easily the best opener.

In a young career of 19 Tests, Jaiswal has 14 fifty-plus scores at strike-rates ranging from 40.38 to 141.17. In a treacherous era for batting, he is averaging 52.88 when the overall average for openers in Tests he has played is 36.42.

Jaiswal comes to England as a key member of the Indian Test team. There's no Kohli or Rohit. Jasprit Bumrah will likely play only three Tests. Along with Rishabh Pant, Jaiswal has the most accomplished record among India's Test batters.

If England stick to playing Bazball, the pitches will be truer than the one we saw in the World Test Championship final. Such surfaces will call for Jaiswal to capitalise on starts and go big. If it seams, he will need to perhaps counterattack and respond to England's methods. Conditions can vary a lot with the weather in England. More than a test of his ability, this tour will be a test of Jaiswal's adaptability. And he's shown plenty of ability to adapt already.