‘Short-ball problem talk did get into my head at one point’: Shreyas Iyer

Shreyas Iyer, who hit 87 runs to lift India from a hole in the second Test against Bangladesh, was targeted for a brief while with short balls the bowlers.
Later, he admitted that the short-ball talk had got into his head at one point, and he has been training hard to cope against that tactic.
“That (the short ball issue) is just what the commentators talk about. And off-the-field guys kept saying it was an issue. It had gone into my head at one point. But if you see, if I can leave or keep it down, I definitely don’t have a problem. Runs wouldn’t come (against short balls); that was the situation.
“Obviously bowlers started to target when I came to bat. When the ball was seaming well, they were bowling short balls. I told myself its’ good, I can get runs now. Practice keeps happening and execution also.

FIFTY👌👌
A fine half-century @ShreyasIyer15 off 60 deliveries. His 5th in Test cricket.
Live – https://t.co/XZOGpedIqj #BANvIND pic.twitter.com/uT5u6NuDNk
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 23, 2022
“It does play in batsmen’s mind when people from outside talk about the problem and it’s important as a player to turn a deaf ear to them. The rest will take care of itself. At the end of the day, ignorance is bliss,” Iyer said.
Bowlers around the world do target Shreyas with that strategy. Even in July in England at Birmingham, Shreyas Iyer’s arrival at the crease had made England’s coach Brendon McCullum active in the dressing room balcony. McCullum flicked his neck with his right hand; the ominous visual looked straight out of a gangster move but the instruction from the England coach to his players was to start chin music, with a couple of close catchers on the leg side. A short ball angling across the body from James Anderson had accounted for the Indian middle-order batsman in the first innings. In the second innings, too they had softened him up with short balls before he pulled a short one straight to midwicket.
Shreyas is aware of his shortcomings, and it sort of plays on his mind. At the IPL, he was shuffling towards leg, expecting a short ball all the time and missing some regular stuff outside off in the process.
A couple of years ago, during an ODI series Down Under, the Australian fast bowlers were bouncing him with a short-leg and a leg-slip and the ploy worked. At the time, Shreyas had spoken about taking this as a challenge. “I definitely know that they have planned against me, so I’m really happy. At least they are coming up with a plan against me to get me out. I feel very overwhelmed and take it as a challenge because, you see, I thrive under pressure,” he had said.
For a while, it has seemed that he might go the Michael Bevan way. “A lot of people felt I couldn’t play the short ball. Maybe I put too much pressure on myself to play the short ball well. If I had my time again, I would approach it a little bit differently,” former Australia middle-order batsman Michael Bevan had once said.