At no 4, Shreyas Iyer might have increased the batting line-up morale heavily
CHENNAI: It’s early days, but Shreyas Iyer seems darned confident. So much so that on Wednesday, he’d begun celebrating his fourth successive ODI fifty even before getting there.
Iyer eventually did, setting off for the next few days another round of chatter — among the cricketing fraternity, pundits, and netizens alike — about how India have finally found the man for a spot — No 4 — that has been worse than the Defense Against The Dark Arts post at Hogwarts, in terms of someone sticking around long enough.
These are definitely early days, but those suggestions of Iyer being the middle-order tourniquet that the Men in Blue have longed for are far from unfounded. That purple patch mentioned in the second sentence can’t be labelled as a flash in the pan.
Those 31 runs in a single over in Visakhapatnam may have come from a few benevolent full tosses from Roston Chase, but putting each of them away too takes skill. He’s an absolute beast of a fielder; just ask Shimron Hetmyer. At 25, he’s already captaining an IPL franchise, not to mention a domestic juggernaut as well. Iyer knows what it takes to make himself stand out at the elitest of levels.
Broader arguments apart, dissecting the gears that Iyer’s batting engine has in itself ends up making a case for India grooming him as their No 4 heir apparent. He’s got shots: rapier-like cuts, flicks powered by those malleable wrists, a high backlift that makes him a very palpable, offensive threat against bowlers. He’s got different modes. If Iyer was the creator when he went to West Indies in August, Iyer became the destroyer after they came back here.
We’re talking about a batsman who even before coming into national reckoning had beaten the holy Jesus out of Nathan Lyon and Steven O’Keefe to make a nearly run-a-ball double century. Mind you, the ball for that practice clash was red, not white, and those two spinners would go on to be a constant thorn in India’s flesh during that 2017 tour.
Heck, even in the gully-cricket videos that Shreyas puts up on his Instagram account, the ball mostly ends up somewhere nears the trees outside his residence’s gate, ostensibly smarting from the leathering it just received.
Then there are statistics. All of Shreyas white-ball strike rates — be they international or domestic — hover around or soar above 100. Even his first-class strike rate is one of the best world over; an 81.54 that had even gone past David Warner’s mark not too long ago. We’re not even touching on averages. You don’t need to go beyond his time with Delhi Daredevils (and Capitals) too see that he’s both quick and consistent when it comes to scoring.
Even Virat Kohli had acknowledged how one of Shreyas’ modes had set up that series-levelling win in Visakhapatnam, apart from making India’s batting line-up look even more rampaging than it usually is. "What’s been good is in the last three games, including the one at Wankhede and first two ODIs, we’ve batted well in the first half. Batting second isn’t an issue, we’re one of the top sides, if not the best, while chasing. It’s always good to get 40-50 extra. Rohit (Sharma) and KL (Rahul) were outstanding. The opening partnership set it up. Shreyas and Rishabh (Pant), the way they played was outstanding. The more we get confident in T20s while batting first, the better. There’s no major 50-over cricket now, so we need to just play fearlessly, which is the need of the hour," he said.
Like the Indian skipper said on Wednesday night, these are early days since we all want to talk about 20 overs more than 50. But it definitely looks like Iyer is here to stay.