Indian middle-order batter Shreyas Iyer has said that leaving the ball in Tests “bores” him as he likes to play his shots even against negative bowling as well. However, his comments came after Mumbai’s 10-wicket win over Andhra Pradesh in the Ranji Trophy as well. He got only one chance to bat in the game and smashed a run-a-ball 48 with seven fours while batting at No. 5.
“I’m going to play attacking irrespective of the situation,” he told reporters after the match. “And also when you bowl negative, when you bowl safe and defensive at the start, you want to score runs and you need to take your team through up to a certain point. So that was my mindset and that’s why stuck with. Yeah, I was happy irrespective of the score.”
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“[As] I said, they were bowling defensive and they didn’t let me play to my strengths. Even though they started with the short balls, I was able to execute them for boundaries and get a lot of runs out of it. Again, they were bowling negative so there was literally no scope to…other than leaving the ball I couldn’t have done much. I knew that leaving the ball would, to be honest, bore me. I would rather go and play some strokes. That’s what I considered at that point of time,” he further added.
However, having been dropped from India’s ongoing T20I series against Afghanistan, Shreyas Iyer joined Mumbai for the red-ball tournament. He didn’t open up about the snub directly and just stated that he wanted to stay in the moment and help Mumbai win as well. He also said that the pitch for the match against Andhra at the Sharad Pawar Cricket Academy wasn’t as big a turner as India would expect for the upcoming Tests as well.
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“It’s fun. I love competition, and when competition is there, you face more challenges. And that’s what I thrive on personally. So I enjoy having competition around because then you can go at each other and also against the opponents to show your talent and skills,” Shreyas concluded.
The India-England Test series will start on January 25 in Hyderabad.
