He once lived in tents and sold street food to pursue his cricketing dream. Now, sizzling talent Yashasvi Jaiswal is the toast of the Indian Premier League.
On Thursday, the 21-year-old continued his remarkable season by smashing the fastest fifty in IPL history off just 13 balls on his way to 98 not out in Rajasthan Royals' nine-wicket win over Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens.
He beat the previous record of 14 balls held jointly by KL Rahul and Pat Cummins.
It was Jaiswal's fourth half-century of this year's tournament, with his final total coming off just 47 balls, including 12 fours and five sixes.
“Wow this is some of the best batting I've seen in a while. What a talent,” Indian star batsman Virat Kohli wrote on Instagram.
Last month, Jaiswal also plundered 124 off 62 balls in front of a huge crowd in Mumbai, the city he moved to as a child from a poor family in Uttar Pradesh.
“He has got real talent. The kind of domestic season he has had, he has taken that form into the IPL. Good for him, good for Indian cricket and good for RR as well,” India's all-format captain Rohit Sharma said.
Jaiswal is in the hunt to finish the IPL campaign as leading run-scorer, sitting just one run behind South African veteran Faf du Plessis with 575 runs from 12 matches.
His strike rate of 167.15 is lower only than Suryakumar Yadav's in the top 15 run-scorers this season.
Jaiswal moved to Mumbai – without his parents – when he was just 11. “I used to sleep in a dairy and then stayed at my uncle's place but it wasn't big enough and he asked me to find a different place,” Jaiswal told AFP in an interview in 2020.
“I then started to stay in a tent near Azad Maidan [a Mumbai sports ground] and would play cricket there during the day.”
“I sold pani puri at night, to help earn some money for food,” he said, referring to a popular street snack.
Jaiswal also did some cricket scoring and fetched balls in club games to help finance his career before being noticed by coach Jwala Singh, who became the boy's legal guardian.
“I saw in Yashasvi a younger me and thought God is giving me another chance to play well in my second innings of life,” Singh, who played state-level cricket, told AFP in 2020.
Jaiswal won a place in the Mumbai state team in 2019 and became the youngest batsman, at 17 years and 292 days, to score a domestic one-day double century.
His big break came when he was snapped up by Rajasthan for $338,000 in the 2019 IPL auction.
In 2020, Jaiswal was the leading scorer for India's Under-19 team, and player of the tournament at that year's Under-19 World Cup.
He had to bide his time before becoming a Rajasthan regular, scoring three fifties across the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
But this year he has formed a fearsome opening pair with England white-ball captain Jos Buttler.
His sparkling hundred against Mumbai Indians was in a losing cause, but the victory target was all that prevented him notching a second IPL ton against KKR, as Rajasthan eased to a nine-wicket win with almost seven overs to spare on Thursday.
“I always have it in my heart to go out and do well,” Jaiswal said.
“It's not like everything happened right but I try … I'm learning to play till the end and win it for the team.”
Jaiswal is yet to play for India but an international call-up appears to be just a matter of time.
He boasts impressive statistics in all formats, including an average of 80.21 in first-class cricket after racking up nine hundreds in his first 15 games.
“This year he has taken his game to a new level,” Rohit said.
“I asked him where all that power is coming from because last year I didn't see so many sixes and he was timing it so nicely. He says 'I have been spending a lot of my time in the gym'.”
Thursday's victory pushed Rajasthan into third in the table.
If Jaiswal can continue his remarkable form and take the Royals to a first IPL title since the inaugural event in 2008, he could yet force his way into the India reckoning for the one-day World Cup to be played on home soil later this year.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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