For three years, he lived with groundsmen in the Muslim United Club’s tent at the Azad Maidan ground in Mumbai. He had to, after he was thrown out of a dairy shop where he used to sleep.

Yashasvi Jaiswal was just 11 years old then and the only thing that kept him going was a dream — to play cricket for India.

It’s six years later now and Jaiswal is 17 years old, a middle-order batsman with remarkable temperament and is ready to make his IPL debut against Chennai representing Rajasthan Royals. Mumbai’s Under-19 coach Satish Samant says Jaiswal has “extraordinary game sense and unflappable focus.”

The younger of two sons to a small-time shopkeeper in Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh, Jaiswal moved to Mumbai to pursue cricket. His father did not object since he found it hard to feed the family. An uncle, Santosh, in Mumbai, had a house in Worli, but it wasn’t big enough for another occupant. Santosh had requested the owners of Muslim United Club, where he was a manager, if the boy could stay in the tent.

For three years, that tent became his home. The teenager took pains to ensure that stories of his struggles never reached Bhadohi, as that would end his cricketing career.

Occasionally, his father would send some money but that was never enough. He had to sell pani-puri during the Ram Leela in Azad Maidan and help sell fruits.

But there were still days when he would go to sleep on an empty stomach as the groundsmen with whom he shared the tent fought with each other. Without them cooking, he would drift off with just dreams lulling him to sleep.

During Ram Leela, I earned well. I prayed that my teammates would not come there for pani-puri. Sometimes they did and I would feel bad serving them,” he says. He tried his best to keep some money coming in. He would score and play games with older boys to earn Rs 200-300 to survive a week.

“I always used to see boys my age bringing food or their parents had big lunches with them. As for me, it was — khana khud banao, khud khao. (make your own food, eat alone). No breakfast. Catch hold of anyone around and request them to buy breakfast,” he recalls.

Lunch and dinner were at the tent and his job was making rotis. “Every night used to be a candlelight dinner. After all, there was no electricity.”

The days were fine, he recalls, since he was busy scrounging around for work and cricket, but the nights sometimes were too long.