Shreyas Iyer on a higher pedestal now

Dubai: Shreyas Iyer is nothing if not confident, almost bordering on cocky. He thinks little of striding out at 10 for two in a One-Day International and smashing the first ball out of the park for six. He can also play out five dot balls in an over and produce a blazing stroke out of nowhere off the sixth.

In an Indian batting line-up largely predictable – one knows, for sure, that Rohit Sharma will go after the bowling from the get-go, that Shubman Gill will largely shun the aerial strokes, that Virat Kohli will bed himself in while working the ones and twos -- no one is sure what to expect from Iyer. It is this singular lack of predictability that makes him so dangerous in the 50-over format.

Iyer has all the strokes in the book. At 30, he isn’t quite the out-and-out modern-day batter like a Yashasvi Jaiswal or an Abhishek Sharma, but he also isn’t as old-school as his captain or Kohli. He has fused the best of both worlds, which is why he averages 47.73 in 67 ODIs while scoring at 101.90 for every 100 balls faced.

He reiterated his importance to the 50-over set-up with a terrific World Cup at home a year and a quarter back, hammering successive hundreds at better than a run a ball (including in the semifinal against New Zealand) and finishing as his team’s third highest run-maker. It was his way of saying 'thank you’ to the team management for waiting till the proverbial last minute for him to recover fully from a back injury that had required him to go under the surgeon’s knife earlier in 2023.

Not pencilled in to start the ODI series in England earlier this month, he received a call the night before the match – movie night, no less – from Rohit, informing him that Kohli’s sore knee would warrant his inclusion in the XI in Nagpur. Iyer responded with 59 off 36, then reeled off 44 off 47 and 78 off 64 in Cuttack and Ahmedabad respectively. It was during these three essays that a new facet of his batting established itself.

Carrying the reputation of being susceptible to the short ball, a changed set-up at the crease triggered greater control over the pull shot that he plays almost compulsively. England attacked his body through pace – Jofra Archer, Mark Wood, Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse, Jamie Overton – but Iyer had an answer to every bouncer, to every delivery aimed at his ribs and his head. The pumped fist that followed a pull off the speedy Wood which sailed into the stands beyond deep backward square in Ahmedabad was Iyer congratulating himself.

At No. 4, he is expected to react to the situation he walks into. In Dubai, he has been required to rein in his natural attacking instincts – like all others bar Rohit – in deference to the slowness of the surfaces that preclude unfettered stroke-making. He didn’t have a great outing against Bangladesh but on Sunday, after an iffy start when confronted by old foes Pakistan, he blossomed to play an almost templated Iyer innings marked by a free flow of the bat as the strut and swag resurfaced.

Iyer is one of those who loves getting on a roll. Meaningful knocks have come in clusters – 71, 65, 70 and 53 on the bounce between August and December 2019, 44*, 103, 52 and 62 in a row in January-February 2020, and a stunning run of 80, 54, 63, 44, 50, 113*, 28*, 80, 49, 24 and 82 in 11 straight hits between February and December 2022. He has now topped 40 in four of his last five innings, showing that he is no one-trick pony, that he can bat in different gears and can switch gears just as effectively. A terrific trait to possess even in a batting line-up as prolific, versatile and deep as India’s.