Jaiswal: From diamond in the rough to a rock

In his free time, you will often find Yashasvi Jaiswal sitting by the riverfront near the team hotel in Perth. He goes off on a walk, sometimes alone, because few things calm him more than looking at the Swan River as it snakes its way through the city. Perhaps this is true of many players from Mumbai, all used to the presence of the Arabian Sea, but even among them, the left-hander stands out.

- Ashish Magotra

After getting dismissed for a duck in the first innings, there was no better way to simply take a deep breath and get his focus back. He had been caught driving on the up and copped some criticism for it as well.

But on Sunday, when he was finally dismissed—inexplicably cutting a short and wide delivery straight to point—after a marathon 161-run innings that lasted 297 balls, he walked off to a standing ovation as the crowd rose in unison. It is not an honour that the Australian crowd doles out with regularity, but in this case, it was a thoroughly deserved one.

"This boy is special, he really is special," said Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar on Star Sports. "Looking at where he's come from and the way he's been batting, the way he's been handling fame, it's not easy sometimes to handle fame. Against England, he scored more than 700 runs in five Test matches (with) two double hundreds earlier in the year. And he looks so hungry for runs, which is what you want as a batter. A lot of us were told, 'get a hundred.' I think he says, 'I want to get a 150 or 200.' He's hungry for runs, and that's exactly what Indian cricket needs."