On squarest of square turners, Shreyas Iyer defangs Sri Lankan spinners on Day One of Pink-ball Test

To the immeasurable silence of the stadium strode in Shreyas Iyer. The crowd favourite, Virat Kohli, had just perished to a shockingly low ball that had both him and the audience praying for his 71st hundred equally shocked.
So silent that if you tuned your ears sharply, you could even hear the thud of Shreyas’s studs on the grass. But after 134 minutes of dazzling batting, after crunching 92 runs off 98 balls on a day no other batsman touched 40 on a bedevilled surface that spun, spat and shot and skidded, Shreyas returned to the pavilion to the deafening applause and light from swaying smartphones flickering like glow-worms.
A man for crisis was thus born. Long since has Shreyas become a household name; he has racked a hundred on debut, is a million dollar entity in the Indian Premier League, endorses a horde of brands, but the character-stamping moment arrived in the Bangalore twilight, when he single-handedly steered India to a commanding total on a capricious surface. He came with the team tottering at 86/4, saw them plummet to 126/5, and the wind knocked off their sails. But with a knock that was reminiscent of that virtuoso VVS Laxman, he bent the script of the match with his unbending will and strokes, thus dragging the hosts to 252, which already looks like an unscalable mountain for Sri Lanka. They have already plunged to 86/6.
Of all those virtues that shone through the evening, twilight and the night—stroke-play, assurance, mental toughness—it’s the clarity of approach that sparkled the brightest. Often, young batsmen freeze in crisis. For all their technical gifts and repertoire of strokes, they frazzle in adversity, wondering whether they should alter the approach, shake-up their game, be over attacking or ultra-defensive. Muddled their minds are, they end up playing uncharacteric shots and self-destruct.

FIFTY!
A scintillating half-century for @ShreyasIyer15 and he brings it up with a maximum 👏👏
This is his 2nd in Test cricket.
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— BCCI (@BCCI) March 12, 2022
Shreyas was cool under duress to process the situation and play accordingly; he also has the bloody-mindedness to change games.
Had he flinched, he should have been forgiven; he is playing just his third Test, has just watched the captain get out to a grubber and the surface misbehave.His mind could have slipped into a dizzy whirl of doubts. But he picked the opportunity to assert his belongingness at this level. A hundred on debut could not guarantee his spot; this 92 definitely would. Unlike Rishabh Pant, he didn’t look to attack every ball; he did not retreat into a shell either. He batted as he normally would, punishing the bad balls and blocking the good ones, both with utmost efficiency. Even the flurry of boundaries when he started losing partners did not seem like a deliberate counterpunch, but just his natural method.

Shreyas Iyer’s elegant dual sixes.
Gave the charge, got to the pitch of the ball and dispatched it for a huge six. One in the crowd, one out of the ground. @ShreyasIyer15 special this.
📽️📽️https://t.co/hYMOuZohcc @Paytm #INDvSL pic.twitter.com/EdrmYEM4ZQ
— BCCI (@BCCI) March 12, 2022
Shreyas has two vital tools to defang the spinners on the squarest of square-turners. The dexterity to use his feet and the mastery over the sweep and slog. Almost all the past conquerors of the turning, spitting ball on turners had either of the gifts. He has both in lavish amounts. So he would, even against left-arm spinners, glide out to drive with the awareness and confidence that even if he couldn’t reach upto the pitch of the ball, he could make late adjustments to defend. The method reaped two-fold merits. First, he made them bowl shorter, and Sri Lanka’s spinners towards the end veered on the shorter side frequently. Then, he made them either bowl too leg-side in the futile pursuit of a stumping or too wide outside the off-stump.

But the magnificence of him was that he was not content dishevelling bowlers off their line for survival, but attacked them, ruthlessly, almost remorselessly. The introduction of off-spinner Dhananjaya de Silva was an invitation for him to heave him over the mid-wicket fence, twice in an over, the second winking in his half-century. At the nets on the days preluding the Test, he was seen belting out these very shots into the vacant stands. A long reach, quick hands and quicker feet, besides the muscle memory ingrained in his long and arduous domestic grind, have conditioned him to destroy spin, a throwback like Dilip Vengsarkar or Sachin Tendulkar. Even most modern-day Indian batsmen prefer playing spinners from the crease, but not Shreyas. Cheteshwar Pujara was an exception but he had not Shreyas’s attacking vigour or range.
India’s Shreyas Iyer plays a shot during the first day of the second cricket test match between India and Sri Lanka in Bengaluru, India, Saturday, March 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
Exquisite was his foot-work when drilling the left-arm spinner through the covers and extra-cover. He would step out and at the exact moment of meeting the ball, the back-leg would arch diagonally like the hand of a scissors to provide him the power and precision to go inside out and hit over extra cover. He makes that difficult shot of all look utterly smooth and easy. No jerks, no hassles, just a smooth transition of weight.

As bowling fuller or good length failed to bear any fruit, Lankan bowlers, despondently, erred on the shorter side. Abominable short balls that he fleeced through either side of the wicket. The visitors summoned Suranga Lakmal, who strayed onto his body, and Shreyas just wred him behind the keeper, a shot that required both power and sophry in equal measures. Later, he would forsake the use of feet. Why not, when could just stand in his crease and belt the ball to where he wanted it to? The Lankans were feeding him with short balls, full balls, and everything tripe one could imagine.
Solid defending
Even when defending, he looked utmost assured, more than any other batter. He would lean into his front-foot defence, getting his bat positively low for a tall man. A lot of tall men tend to stab at the ball from the crease using their reach, but Shreyas gets his front-foot fully forward and defends with a pair of soft hands.

The longer he batted, the dant the memory of Kohli became. He provided them the entire spectacle Kohli could have had he batted deeper—a smothering intensity and splendid stroke-play. In the end, he made them forget Kohli in Bangalore with a how-to-bat-on-turners manual.