Kevin Pietersen was raging. “Listen, when Kohli comes back and other guys come back [KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja] and these are the days these boys are going to look back and go, ‘oh why did I not get a hundred? I had the opportunity to get the hundred’. And when you are sloppy like that, getting out doesn’t impress me at all,” the former England batsman, and now television pundit, fumed after the first innings in the second Test at Vizag. His anger was directed at India’s No.4 for the game Shreyas Iyer
Now, even without Virat Kohli playing, but the “other guys” returning, the pressure is still on Iyer. Luckily for him, his contender Rajat Patidar didn’t make it count either and the shootout between the two for a spot in the team when the third Test swings into action in Rajkot on February 15 will be interesting. With Rahul’s return, India might want the more overtly aggressive Iyer in the mix but you never know. That it has come to this is Iyer’s own making.
One thing is clear from his brief Test career. He is not going to look ‘composed’ or show ‘hunger’ or not be ‘sloppy’ in traditional terms as Pietersen wishes. That doesn’t seem his way. As a batsman he puts himself in unique positions that can bewilder even former cricketers, let alone the fans.
🎯 Shreyas goes 𝘚𝘪𝘪𝘶𝘶𝘶 with a stunning direct hit to get rid of the dangerous Stokes 🥶#BazBowled #IDFCFirstBankTestsSeries #JioCinemaSports#INDvENG pic.twitter.com/SNrchCWtsF
— JioCinema (@JioCinema) February 5, 2024
In Visakhapatnam, he started to shuffle outside leg before the left-arm spinner Tom Hartley released the ball and returned to his original position to tap away the balls. That too irked Pietersen. “On this wicket, why are you doing that? What you are doing is you are messing yourself up, losing where your stumps are as a batter. I am more comfortable if you are coming towards the bowler, this here does nothing for me.”
The thing that might have grated Pietersen is that Iyer is considered a good attacking batsman of spin: twinkling feet, the dare, the imagination, and the skill to pull it off, but it hasn’t come off yet in this series. But that shuffle move, we have seen in the subcontinent before, usually in the white-ball cricket.
Pakistan’s Salim Malik would do it to spinners, but he wouldn’t retreat to the crease but remain there and slash-slice-cut through the off side. It seems Iyer triggers himself for some dare, but doesn’t quite go the whole hog. When he went towards the bowler in the second innings, as Pietersen wished, he went for an almighty heave against the turn and miscued it towards long-off.
Or take that position he adopted against James Anderson on a relatively placid track when the short-pitched stuff began. For a short while, he was pulling them down, but suddenly yanked to an approach he has used in the past. Moving outside leg stump, trying to swat balls over the off side. He didn’t connect with any; once even nearly dragged on to his stumps, triggering smiles from Ollie Pope and co.
Visakhapatnam: India’s batter Shreyas Iyer plays a shot during the first day of the second Test cricket match between India and England, at Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam, Friday, Feb. 2, 2024. (PTI Photo/R Senthilkumar)
Interestingly, that’s the approach that Don Bradman took in the famous Bodyline series. With the field behind square on the leg packed (the rules would later be changed to not more than two men), and Larwood and Co. opened the dam of bouncers, Bradman had enough of trying to keep the ball down or sway away. As there were nothing but short balls to face, and he wanted runs, he moved outside leg and tried to slash them to the off side. Once, he even dragged a ball onto his stumps. The interesting approach divided the cricketing world. Some, like his own team-mate Jack Fingleton, saw it as the great batsman turning ‘yellow’, a minority saw it as a prudent way to get some runs against that line of attack.
On a flat track at Visakhapatnam, it was a 41-year old James Anderson, a swing great who has reinvented himself with seam bowling in the subcontinent and a man not known for bowling pacy-high-intense bouncers. And England didn’t have any other medium pacer, forget paceman, in the XI. But that’s how Iyer likes to bat. For some reason, he is loath to sway or duck away. Neither is there a confidence that he can continue to keep the ball down on the leg side with waiting English palms near the boundary.
It’s not as if he hasn’t worked in conventional ways in the recent past. As Mohammad Kaif would point out on Star Sports during the World Cup, he tweaked with his bat-lift. Previously, where he was holding the bat almost vertically up in his stance and tilting it further past the ears before the commencement of the downswing, he held it behind him, not quite parallel to ground but not extremely up. The whole swing had become tighter and smoother.
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“If I can leave or keep it down, I definitely won’t have a problem,” he had said but Iyer clearly doesn’t want to do it. Does he feel it will encourage more bouncers, or thinks it’s not the aggressive way he would like to see himself bat, or does he think it’s not cool? But none of his current options are going to make the pacers, even a forty-plus medium pacer, not try the short stuff.
In the end, whether conventional or his own way, it would come down to success. If he backs away and collects fours on the untenanted off side, the critical world might shut up. Until then, forget them, the opposition fast bowlers and spinners are going to keep whirling away at him. He will have to make Rajkot count at all costs.
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