His issues came to the fore again in the Kolkata Test.
Yashasvi Jaiswal registered another low score in the second innings against South Africa, getting out on a 4-ball duck. Like in the first innings, Marco Jansen dismissed him in the second innings as well and again exposed a glaring pattern in Jaiswal’s dismissals: issues with left-arm pace.
Since 2024, he has averaged 25.66 and lost his wicket six times in 13 Test innings against left-arm pacers. Overall, Jaiswal has been dismissed eight times and averaged a mere 21.75 against this bowling type in his Test career.
He is a backfoot player who has had issues with the angle across him, so when left-arm pacers target him from over the wicket, he naturally plays for fuller-length deliveries, which have troubled him in the past. He made adjustments on the Australia tour, where he would start from the leg side rather than the usual middle and leg shuffle and move forward rather than going back and across.
The pattern changed a bit in the Kolkata Test, where both of his dismissals were off the slightly shorter length, especially in the first innings. That’s where Jaiswal’s perennial trouble against cut shots, irrespective of the bowling hand, came to the fore.
With Yashasvi Jaiswal, a major issue has historically been cut shots, despite being a tremendous backfoot player, due to his inability to create enough room behind the line. Then, his bat becomes too horizontal, which brings both edges into the picture, and he often goes too hard by premeditating the line.
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For instance, Yashasvi Jaiswal didn’t count for inward movement in the first innings, and his ferocious cut could only induce an inside edge, and the ball crashed the stumps. Later, in the second innings, Jansen started with shorter ones before going a bit fuller, and the ball seamed away this time to induce an outside edge.
The left-arm bowlers who have dismissed him – Mitchell Starc, Nandre Burger, and Marco Jansen – also have a role: they are all tall and generate awkward bounce, along with an unusual angle that already troubles Jaiswal. Then, the pitches, from Centurion to Kolkata, have been extreme, and bowlers have generated excessive bounce and seam movement.
That’s where his premeditation of lines and lengths has resulted in dismissals; he makes himself limited by the time the ball comes and fails to counter late movement. There have been conscious efforts not to play those wild cuts on deliveries angled across him by right-arm pacers, and he must now avoid premeditating against left-armers as well.
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