How Shreyas Iyer is trying to be the Yuvraj Singh-Suresh Raina hybrid in middle overs | Cricket News

The outside chatter does not rankle Shreyas Iyer. It simply irritates him, like perhaps flies buzzing around him. “It’s irritating, especially when it comes from people who haven’t faced 150 km per hour delivery advising you to play in a particular way,” he quipped during an Idea Exchange with this masthead.It’s the suffocating reality of sportsmen in the era of social media snap judgment. The flaws are cruelly exposed, exaggerated and ridiculed; a verbal slip is ruthlessly scavenged and spun out of context, deities are designed and demolished in the flutter of merciless fingers, and in the clutter of games, match-defining acts arrive with shorter shelf lives.
So it’s the fate of Shreyas to be crucified for one flaw of his rather than be celebrated for his virtues. The short-ball, quick and skiddy, searing into his rib-cage troubles him. He is getting around it—he has experimented and adopted different stances, trigger movement and bat-swings. But fast bowlers would instinctively look to bounce him out.
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Shreyas Iyer of India hitting a four during the 3rd ODI match between India and England held at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad, India on the 12th February 2025. (Sportzpics)
However, for all his short-ball travails, he remains a valuable but undervalued batsman of his team. He straddles a set of roles that are so unique that it’s hard to define his role, and harder to dislodge him from the playing side.
He is neither the opener nor finisher—the two most glamorous roles in this format. He does not occupy the spot reserved for the team talisman, the No 3 role. Nor that of the stabiliser the crisis. His role is akin to defensive midfielder in football, to fill holes, to cover-up his erring teammates, an agent of cohesion, the man who furnishes others the licence to be themselves, to let others shine in his light.
Iyer’s relentless aggression unburdens Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill and KL Rahul; he lets them bat at their comfortable pace. He enables Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel to conserve their destructive energies to the death overs. He fuses the qualities of the top-order, the short-making repertoire, game-reading and awareness, with the daring of the lower-order. He infuses assurance, albeit a frenetic one, yet ensures that the run-rate builds.
The three knocks in the series against England are instructive exhibits of rare and supreme craft. In Nagpur, he strode out at No 4, with India wading a semi-crisis at 19 for 2, and blasted 59 off 36 balls, providing the impetus for the chase. In Cuttack, he scored 44 off 57 balls, enacting a more watchful role after a blering start. In Ahmedabad, his freewheeling 78 off 64 balls turbocharged India to 356. So was it in the 2023 World Cup, where he reeled off every genre of knock, and where he truly was one of India’s batting pillars. Only Kohli and Rohit scored more runs than him, but he scored his 530 runs at a quicker clip than Kohli (113 to 90.31), and unlike Rohit didn’t have the allowance of fewer fielders inside the ring. Iyer’s task was to wreak havoc in the middle-overs.Story continues below this ad
Maybe, that is his role—the middle-over disruptor, the all-calculated counterpuncher, unpredictable in his mood, methods and manners. A Suresh Raina-Yuvraj Singh hybrid.
But like most things in life, you are more valued adversaries rather than friends and family. The Australian think-tank spent most of their analysis-time plotting ways to contain him before the World Cup final. If it were as simple as bouncing him out, the well-worn pace attack wouldn’t have wasted so much time and energy on him. The short-full ball double-bluff worked in the end, but any top batter could be vulnerable to smart scheming.
Shreyas Iyer of India hitting a four during the 1st ODI match between India and England held at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium, Nagpur, India on the 6th February 2025. (Sportzpics)
Like his role, he bats differently to other batsmen. With all others, there is a pattern. Rohit, in his hyper-aggressive avatar, goes hammer and tongs from the start. Gill and Kohli soak their time before shifting through the gears; KL Rahul is an artful destroyer. Iyer is patternless, like a clever sniper. He might block the first five balls, or swipe the first ball onto the sight-screen. At times, he fidgets in the crease, stands differently, or moves differently. The bat descends from different angles.
All these could misconstrue an impression that he is unsettled. On the contrary, this is his cricketing wisdom ticking. He once explained to this newspaper: “On a certain track, you need to chop and change a little bit with your stance. Not your grip that much, but with your stance and your trigger movements. I have practised a lot on that. I have a set mindset, like, okay, this is how I’m going to play on that particular wicket. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But I went out there with a plan. You might not execute it every time.”Story continues below this ad
He ferries the ball to unusual areas too. For instance, he tickled a pacy Mark Wood from the off-stump past the wicket-keeper, when most batsmen would have tried to run it down the third man. With a swirl of the wrs, he lofts the ball over mid-off’s head whereas others would have looked to bunt it through covers. Besides, he is India’s most destructive player of spin bowling. Former coach Rahul Dravid dwells on another valuable trait of his. His temperament. “I think one of the things Shreyas has shown us right from the time that I have seen him [play for] India A, is his temperament, the way he handles success and failure. You just look at even some of his knocks under pressure, how he’s able to actually bring the best out of himself under those pressure situations,” he elaborated.

He is selfless in a way that centuries or man-of-the-match plaques don’t seduce him, letting others shine in his light. The numbers too glitter—801 runs at 53.40 with a strike rate of 114.59. Yet, he remains grossly understated. Yet, his place in the eleven is questioned. Yet, he would have sat out of the Nagpur ODI had Kohli been fit. Yet, there is incessant chatter about his short-ball flaw. But, he is gradually building a legacy—the legacy of the Iyer role, the middle-over disruptor.