Shreyas Iyer was ruffled for the second time in a week. He was batting on 12 off 35 during a particularly cagey period of play at the Eden Gardens and was itching to hit his way out of trouble when a timely message arrived from the Indian dressing room asking him to hunker down for a little longer. The relay of the instruction had the intended effect of calming him down and India’s No.4 found the necessary uptick soon enough by calculating a take down of Tabraiz Shamsi, Aiden Markram and Marco Jansen to finish with 77 off 87.
Just two days earlier in Mumbai, after another near-hundred, Iyer came out swinging against what he perceived was a media-created mahol (narrative) around his hassles versus the short ball. “Have you seen how many pull shots I’ve scored, especially which has gone for four?,” he retorted. “You know if you try to hit a ball, you’re bound to get out anyway whether it’s a short ball or overpitched.”
These are noteworthy because Iyer is not easily unnerved. In fact, he is known to permeate a sense of calm in the dressing room while batting. Stand-in skipper KL Rahul said so himself after Iyer and Ravichandran Ashwin won India a tense Mirpur Test last year, a game Rahul Dravid referenced while extolling the many gifts of his 28-year-old No.4 bat.
“He brings temperament,” Dravid said on the eve of the Netherlands clash in Bengaluru. “I think one of the things Shreyas has shown us is right from the time that I have seen him… he came and played India A when I was coaching those days. And I think one of the things that’s really stood out to me is his temperament, the way he handles success, failure. You just look at even some of his knocks under pressure, how he’s able to actually bring the best out of himself under those pressure situations…”
“And I think Shreyas, one of the things that does stand out… Look at some of his Test innings [in Kanpur], look at how he started his Test debut. Look at some of the critical knocks he’s played for us. Even in the two years that I’ve been here, I mean, Bangladesh, you know that game, under extreme pressure, who’s the guy who stands up? Ash [Ashwin] and Shreyas, guys like that who have incredible temperament, incredible strength of mind, and I think that’s what has held him in really good stead. He’s terrific temperamentally. So, when someone like him does well, you know he’s going to make big contributions. It may not always work out, but when it does, you know someone like him is going to make a big play.”
Iyer’s technique, especially against the short ball, doesn’t sit easily on the eyes. He shuffles towards off, sometimes towards leg, looking to make room to hit empty pockets. When he gets cramped up in the process, the dismissal looks very ungainly. And there have been a couple in this very World Cup. Former cricketers have brought up this technical flaw and Iyer has almost selectively batted to a diet of short balls hurled at him in almost every training session. But it is to be noted that Iyer has gotten out to the short ball only because he has chosen a risk-laden response while facing them. The more risks that batters take, the more intimately they are acquainted with failure. When it pays off, though, they broaden their teams’ range of possibilities.
His compulsive nature to go on the counter-offensive sits well with India’s batting blueprint, especially in his position sandwiched between Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, who bring a similar degree of orthodoxy to the middle-order. But take a look at the numbers: Iyer strikes at 99.28 and averages 28 against pace since his return. When viewed alongside his ability to counter spin, it makes Iyer an excellent middle-order proposition.
“Everyone will have areas that they need to work on and need to improve…someone might have some other area, there’s no complete batsman who can say that I know everything or I’m very good at everything? I mean, you are always going to need areas to improve. But at the end of the day, you have to be judged by the results you produce. And the runs you score and when you score them,” Dravid said.
Since his return in September from a lengthy spell out with a back injury, Iyer averages a shade under 50 (49.89) while striking at 101.58 from 11 innings including a century and three half-centuries. Zoom right into the No.4 role for more revelatory statistics. Only three India batters have scored over a 1000 runs at a 40-plus average and a 90-plus strike-rate and two of them – Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni – will walk into an all-time India ODI XI. The other is Shreyas Iyer. Place this consistency alongside the team at the 2019 World Cup that had a revolving door of No.4 options and India would seem a significantly beefed up batting side to the one that exited in the semi-finals four years ago by having Iyer there.
It’s a luxury that Dravid doesn’t take for granted. “I can look back on this whole campaign and look at the contributions of our middle order and they’ll come only in sort of spurts, or one knock here, or two knocks there, and somebody done something there… a Shreyas, or a KL, or a Surya’s knock here, and Jaddu’s important knock in Dharamsala. And you can look at a lot of these small, small things, and actually that’s what really gives you those ticks, or gives you those wins at the end of the day. So, it’s a combination of things. And touchwood, our middle-order has been truly exceptional in this tournament.”
