Boom baby-faced opener is India’s answer to Warner

When David Warner retired last summer, Australia knew full well how difficult it would be to replace him even accounting for a lean final few years of his Test career.

"There's not another David Warner out there," coach Andrew McDonald said after the opener signed off with a quick-fire half-century at the SCG in January. "The ability to put pressure back onto the bowler all the time – it was a joy to watch in his final innings."

Australia have since trialled two more circumspect batters to fill Warner's shoes; Steve Smith for four Tests and then Nathan McSweeney to begin this summer.

If they had wanted a reminder of why a Warner-esque opener had held such appeal, they got it across days two and three of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series opener. Yashasvi Jaiswal might be the closest to Warner his former teammates will see.

These are early days in the young Indian’s career, but after 28 Test innings he finds himself right next to Warner on the list of the most aggressive openers since the latter's debut in 2011. Only Chris Gayle (70.85), Virender Sehwag (83.70) and Ben Duckett (86.47) have scored quicker than Warner (70.42) and Jaiswal (67.84) among openers over that period.

By those standards, Jaiswal's fourth Test ton and first Down Under was relatively serene. His 161 came at a strike-rate of 54.21.

Yet Jaiswal's approach had clear hallmarks of his attacking instincts. His flicked six off Starc and the ramp to bring up triple figures off Josh Hazlewood will be the strokes fans remember. The first saw Jaiswal break Brendon McCullum’s record for the most sixes hit in a calendar year. But it ran deeper than that.

In a knock lasting more than seven hours, Jaiswal took his chances on a pitch that demanded an element of risk-taking to succeed. He played and missed 26 times (per Opta), close to 10 per cent of the 297 deliveries he faced, while Usman Khawaja put him down on 51.

In between, he peppered the boundaries with enterprising off-side strokes and showed a feisty side, both traits of Warner’s. On commentary for SEN, ex-India coach Ravi Shastri drew parallels between the pair. Jaiswal dared Marnus Labuschagne to risk overthrows by pinging at his stumps and told Mitchell Starc he was "too slow".

Warner was brash in his younger days; Jaiswal is less so. Speaking to reporters at stumps, Jaiswal in fact professed his reverence for Starc, who is 12 years his senior.

"It's amazing to play such great bowlers, playing against them in his home country," he told reporters. "It’s always special to score a hundred against (some of) the best in the world.

"When I was a small kid I was seeing Starc bowling so I wanted to go and enjoy batting (against) him and enjoy his bowling. He bowled really well, he was bowling really quick."

Like Warner, Jaiswal first made his name in the shortest format.

The baby-faced leftie was a star for Rajasthan Royals well before he came on the radar of India's Test side. But, also like Warner who averaged close to 60 in first-class cricket when he made his Test debut, Jaiswal's long-form credentials did not take long to materialise.

By the time he played his first Test in the Caribbean last year, Jaiswal had scored nine first-class centuries from 26 innings. It has helped in developing his ability to flick between gears; in Perth, he went from attack to defence, and back again, as Australia searched for a vulnerability.

"We cycled through a few plans," said Hazlewood. "He batted really well, he's a good player. He batted well. We hung it outside off for a bit with an off-side field. We tried straight, we tried the bouncers – we tried a lot of things. He negated everything."

Jaiswal already had scored more than 1,000 runs in this calendar year before arriving in Australia, but there were question marks over whether his technique was suited to the southern hemisphere.

The leanest series of his short career came at the beginning of this year in South Africa where he averaged just 12.50 from four innings, finding the extra bounce of the home seamers a difficult adjustment from the low pitches he grew up on.

But in the days between India's series defeat to New Zealand and their departure for Australia, Jaiswal underwent a crash course. He faced hours of throwdowns at a stadium on the outskirts of Mumbai batting on a pitch with a concrete slab placed on an incline.

"The concrete slab was kept at short of length and he faced roughly around 200 overs across two days before he left for Australia," Zubin Bharucha, the director of cricket at Rajasthan Royals, told the Press Trust of India.

The icing on the cake was India's extra lead-in time in the Western Australia capital before the first Test, preparing at the WACA Ground which boasts a reputation for having the bounciest conditions in the country.

"I knew that there would be wickets like this. The senior players have been telling (me) how it is going to be," said Jaiswal.

"We had a really nice camp before this game and we were prepared. We were playing on the same kind of wickets, we were having the same kind of mindset on how we can score on these kinds of wickets."

For Australian fans who watched their side’s top order whittle away before stumps on Sunday, those are ominous words.

NRMA Insurance Men's Test Series v India

First Test: November 22-26: Perth Stadium, 1.20pm AEDT

Second Test: December 6-10: Adelaide Oval, 3pm AEDT (D/N)

Third Test: December 14-18: The Gabba, Brisbane, 11.20am AEDT

Fourth Test: December 26-30: MCG, Melbourne, 10.30am AEDT

Fifth Test: January 3-7: SCG, Sydney, 10.30am AEDT

Australia squad: (first Test only) Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey (wk), Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Nathan McSweeney, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc

India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Devdutt Padikkal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar. Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed, Yash Dayal