IPL: How a boat ride in Cornwall, pastries shaped Yashasvi’s world view

The emergence of Yashasvi Jaiswal as one of the Gen Next stars for Indian cricket over the last year (2023) has been an extremely rewarding experience for the Rajasthan Royals management, according to one of their top officials. Set to be on board among the Indian squad for the T20 World Cup next month, young Yashasvi’s role in powerplay will be one of the key factors for his team in Qualifier 2 against Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL 2024 on Friday, 24 May.   

The 22-year-old may have been a moderate success this season (an aggregate of 393 runs to be 20th in the run-getters’ list) compared to 2023, but Yashasvi had taken to Test cricket and the T20 format like a duck to water. “The biggest reason for his success is his hunger, his drive and his work ethic. He hits more balls than any player. He trains harder than any player, and that’s the sort of instinct that he’s got, which has been so amazing to watch,” Jake Lush McCrum, the Royals CEO said in a Spotify podcast.  

Speaking to Pranav Gandhi on SportifywithPRG, McCrum gave a peek into the role the franchise played in grooming raw talent from the maidans of Mumbai. “We had spotted him a few years before we signed him when he was not eligible for the auction yet. There was not enough data to make a decision…so we held a lot of trials with him. The first ball he faced, he stepped across and scooped the fast bowler bowling 135 kmph. That sort of fearlessness, that rawness, that drive was incredibly impressive and so let’s just say we are not surprised with where Yashasvi has gotten to.” 

McCrum also shed light on their efforts behind the scenes towards developing him. “He had to undergo a cultural transformation, because when you’re a young kid who’s been on the maidans, you have to only focus on yourself, and so he came from that setting to a team environment.  

“We took him (Jaiswal) to the United Kingdom. We got him to spend time with business leaders within our UK tech entrepreneurial ecosystem. We took him to different academies. We gave him exposure just by going on a boat in Cornwall with some locals and having some Cornish pastries. Small things like that just opened his eyes to the broader world and made him see the bigger picture and how big the ecosystem supporting him is and how much he's giving back to it as well. And so you see that maturity building.” 

While the Royals have shown a turnaround in their fortunes over the last three-year cycle, making the 2022 final and now in line to make another one, the 2025 mega auction will be the next big thing on their agenda. “It’s a fascinating couple of days. There are not many occurrences where you’re spending $10 million on X number of assets in that short time, and it can have such a variable impact on your next three seasons. That’s why we’ve invested heavily in analytics because we think it gives us a better gauge on the quality of a player, which helps us make better decisions,’’ he added.  

‘’And so being able to value a player more effectively means you can allocate your purse more effectively, which means you can build a stronger squad which helps you win more matches,” he added.