With a double ton, Iyer bashes Punjab

Punjab’s Yuvraj Singh congratulates Mumbai’s Shreyas Iyer after his double century. (Source: Express photo by Kevin D’Souza)

The thing that strikes you when watching the eminently watchable Shreyas Iyer is the relaxed air he exudes in the middle. As if he were playing a Sunday game in a neighbourhood park. It’s not a developed insouciance but something more inherent, a confident air about him.

International players who have played with him in the IPL like JP Duminy and co. have remarked about this trait and it wasn’t a surprise to see that against an insipid Punjab on Friday where his double hundred helped Mumbai pile up a 341-run lead.

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Suryakumar Yadav played a responsible knock of 78, adding 233 runs with Iyer and flattened Punjab before Aditya Tare helped himself to a hundred to ensure the lead kept rising. Now the only question left in the game is whether Punjab will fold up quickly in their second innings as well.

It’s pertinent to record here that Iyer hadn’t had a great start to the domestic season. In the more serious tests posed by South African and Australian A sides, he didn’t quite convert his 20s and 30s into anything substantial. And this knock against Punjab won’t erase those failures but such is the hope and confidence about his talent that people are easily forgiving of those performances. They are seen as necessary steps in self-awareness, and checks against complacency, rather than pointers to any deficiency of skill. It’s interesting to see how different young players are followed, and judged upon, in their developing years.

Ajinkya Rahane or Cheteshwar Pujara, for example, didn’t get this kind of laxity in criticism in their early years, perhaps due to their batting styles in those times and their batting had to evolve before they began to be taken more seriously. It’s also important to re-stress how poor Punjab were in the field. It’s not a devaluation of Iyer’s knock but it allowed one to watch the things that he has been tinkering with since the A series. At the end of those series, he turned around to his batting mentor Pravin Amre, who is the go-to man for many a talented batsmen in the country. Amre shared some of the stuff they worked together in the ensuing period.

“For starters, it was a shift from IPL T20 to a first-class arena that gave him some problem. I had to take him back, mentally, to the previous Ranji season when he hit two hundreds and scored so many runs. The difference between playing a red ball and a white ball for example also plays a role but more importantly he was a bit loose in those A series games,” Amre told The Indian Express.

What was the solution proposed? “Sometimes, it’s nice to give a young batsman a routine before each delivery. It helps in focusing for long periods, reminds them to stick to basics, and makes them stay in posture and shape while batting,” Amre says.

For Iyer, the routine emerged out of the failures in the A series. Amre had seen him standing too upright in the stance, which hampered his fluent batting style.

So, it was back to the oldest trick in batting, especially for taller men. Lean the left shoulder forward, try to make a mental attempt each ball to do that, and allow the instinct to then flow unimpeded.

“If you noticed today he tried to do that. As much as possible, he was leaning forward, holding his position in the stance before he started reacting to the ball. Small little things but it helps in maintaining concentration, and also helps him in his style of play.”

And so there he was on Friday, with a hint of Younis Khan about him. Similar in height, an almost similar manner in the way he picks up the bat, and that strain in pushing the left shoulder forward.

Similarity extended to the style in off-side drives and the flicks. It was almost like Younis Khan in a free-flowing mood; with Younis it comes in phases during his knocks, with Iyer, it was a constant feature through the knock.

At the end of the day, he spoke about his determination to bounce back from the A series failures and play long knocks in first-class cricket. “All I wanted to do today was to play session by session and remain not out at the end of the day. I think I played too many shots in the A series. I worked on visualisation – visualise the kind of bowlers I would be playing in the match and visualise my batting against them. I didn’t expect Yuvraj Singh to bowl and that’s why I perhaps lost my wicket to him,” he added with a laugh.

“I also wanted to prove everyone wrong who were saying that second season is most difficult. That was also a motivation.” The challenge now for both Iyer and Mumbai is to carry on the good work in this match against sterner opposition.

Brief scores: Punjab 154 vs Mumbai 495 (S Iyer 200, A Tare 111, BS Sran 3/87).