‘Sloppy’ ‘Want people more hungry’ ‘When Kohli comes back …’ Kevin Pietersen blasts Shreyas Iyer’s batting in second Test | Cricket News

Former England batsman Kevin Pietersen delivered a stinging criticism of Shreyas Iyer’s batting, terming his knock “sloppy” and saying, “I want people in my dressing room that are more hungry than that”.
“Len, 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,” Pietersen said on Jio Cinema.
“You got to really grab the game the scruff of its neck and say I am not letting go here. I am afraid to say with Shreyas it all seems a bit too sloppy. Sloppy is the word.”
Iyer made 27 from 59 balls, before under-edging an intended cut to the wicketkeeper off the left-arm spinner Tom Hartley. It was a knock noticeable for his odd approach against pace and spin.
On a slow batting-friendly pitch, James Anderson bowled a couple of overs filled with bouncers against him with men in the deep.Initially, Iyer pulled them and kept the ball down as well, before he changed tack and started to shuffle outside leg in an effort to flat-bat it to the off side. It didn’t come off. The first time he tried, he nearly dragged it on his stumps off an inside edge. A couple of England players, including Ollie Pope, smiled in amusement.

Then, against spinners against whom he is usually fluent, Iyer again tried the shuffling technique. He would shuffle outside leg to Hartley and come back to his original position to defend or push away the balls. That irked Pietersen, who brought it up in his tea-time chat with the broadcasters.
“When he is facing up to the bowler, he is jogging his leg out to leg side and then comes back to just defend the ball. You go to show some more intent than leg out there.
If you really want to make a go and put pressure on the bowler, this (gestures the leg-side shuffling movement) doesn’t put the pressure on the bowler. It does nothing to the bowler. You got to show more intent.”
When replays were shown of the shuffles and the host wondered if it was to perhaps unsettle the bowler, Pietersen shot back.
“On this wicket, why are you doing that? That’s my question: what’s the point in 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 dismissal delivery had seemed a harmless one – short of length outside off but didn’t bounce as much as Iyer expected. He went for a cut, but edged it behind where Ben Foakes smartly lowered his gloved hands to pouch a sharp catch.
“He has the ability to play some very good shots. But the soft dismissals are horrible. In this form of cricket, you got to be hungry and have desire,” Pietersen said.
“And when you get out in the way he got out, I am afraid to say it’s sloppy. Today’s innings didn’t impress me at all. Because I want people in my dressing room that are more hungry than that.”
Shubman Gill too didn’t make the chance count, falling for 36 to his old failing of transfer of weight. James Anderson served him a series of length balls, tailing this way and that, around the off stump line before pushing one out wider. Gill lunged out, rather than glide out, and had a firm push at it, bat away from the body, and edged it.
Virat Kohli and KL Rahul are expected to return for the third Test in Rajkot.