COMMENT | Some stories bear repeating. Success has no shortcut but hard work - and ambition, grit, and determination help. Add poverty, hardship, and loneliness, or parental sacrifice and belief, and the hunger to succeed almost always finds a way.

At just 10 years old, Yashasvi Jaiswal left his home in eastern Uttar Pradesh with his father, travelling 1,600km south to Mumbai. Their goal was audacious: to make it as a professional cricketer in a country of 1.4 billion people where the game is revered as a religion.

Soon after arriving, his father returned home, leaving Yashasvi with an uncle. Within days, the boy struck out on his own. He worked at a hawker’s stall before finding shelter in a groundsman’s tent at Azad Maidan, the famous cricket ground.

His diet was glucose biscuits and the occasional free meal; his sustenance was cricket. From dawn to dusk, he...