After Yashasvi Jaiswal's record England tonne Rohit Sharma's 199-week-old prophecy goes viral
At the start of 2020, there was a prophecy made, when the world was grappling with the fear of the dreaded coronavirus, on a 17-year-old left-handed batter by Rohit Sharma. Four years later, Rohit, now a full-time all-format captain of team India, watched from the pavilion at the Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam and applauded jubilantly as that same youngster, Yashasvi Jaiswal, single-handedly battled against England on Day 1 of the second match of the five-test series with a record unbeaten knock of 179 runs.
The knock of 179 runs by the 22-year-old is now the highest individual score by an Indian batter on the opening day of a Test match against England, the joint second-highest in a day's play against the opposition, and the second-best score on the first day of a home Test, behind Wasim Jaffer's 192* against Pakistan in 2007 at Eden Gardens.
Following the record knock, the four-year-old post by Rohit Shrama went viral on social media. It was a two-word post made in April 2020 in response to a throwback video shared by Yashasvi on his Instagram page. The video comprised highlights from his blazing 203 in Mumbai's 39-run win against Jharkhand in their final Elite Group A match of the 2019 Vijay Hazare Trophy. At 17 years and 192 days old, Yashasvi had become the first male teenager in the world to score a double-century in List-A cricket.
Rohit had responded to the video by saying, “Next superstar.”
The unbeaten 257-ball knock of Yashasvi, laced with 17 boundaries and five maximums, always seemed around the corner after his fluent 80 and 74 in the opening Test against England in Hyderabad.