Jayant Yadav is an Indian cricket player who was born on 22 January 1990 in Delhi and plays for Haryana in domestic cricket. He is a fantastic bowling all-rounder who bats right-handed and bowls right-arm off break.
Jayant Yadav made his debut in first-class cricket against Gujarat in 2011 and helped his team win the match by taking six wickets. A year later, in 2012, his record-breaking partnership of 392 runs for the eighth wicket with Amit Mishra caught people's eye and threw a message that he can bat too. His share in the stand was of 211 runs, which was his maiden first-class century also.
In the Ranji season of 2014-15, Jayant took 33 wickets and led the highest wicket-taker list. The selectors did not let his performance go in vain and he was selected for the India A team for a triangular series against South Africa A and Bangladesh A.
Yadav’s transcendent performances in the 2014-15 season of Ranji Trophy invited IPL team owners to buy him and ultimately he was signed by Delhi Daredevils in the auction of the same year. In 2015, he played only 3 games and bowled with an economy rate of 4.14. After being with the Delhi franchise since 2015, Jayant Yadav was traded to Mumbai Indians ahead of the 12th season. Having featured in only 2 games in 2019, Jayant, who was retained by MI, will hope to get more game time in the 2020 season.
In September 2016, Jayant’s name was added in the team to play against New Zealand and on 29 October 2016, he got his ODI cap from his former Haryana teammate and legendary cricketer Virender Sehwag. In his debut match, he bowled 4 overs and took a wicket with a mind boggling economy of 2.00. The match remains his only outing in the ODI arena so far.
On 17 November 2016, Jayant Yadav became 286th Test player for India and Moeen Ali became his debut wicket. In his first three Test matches he scored 221 runs at an average of 73.67, which include one century and one half century.
In his third Test match, he scored a century and made a partnership of 241 runs with Virat Kohli, which is the second highest 8th wicket partnership across the globe. He also became the first batsman for India to score a century at number 9. His sole international century came against a decent bowling attack of England at Wankhede, Mumbai. In Test cricket, he has 11 wickets in his pocket with an average of 33.36.
Jayant lost his real mother, Lakshmi, in a plane crash in the year 1990. Initially, Jayant started bowling as a leg-spinner, but he had to soon change his style because of a funny incident he narrated in an interview. He said, “I started as a leg-spinner, but the funny story is that I have two first cousins who were also leg-spinners so they said it’s not allowed. You cannot have three leg-spinners in the family. At that point, I really thought that was a thing and I turned to off-spin.”
