One thing that India’s new captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Rahul Dravid have stressed is giving a long rope to players who they believe in. It also has been seen as perhaps a tacit admission on the lack of backing given to players in the previous think-tank of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
One such name who struggled to find a place in the squad, let alone in the eleven, during the Kohli-Shastri tenure, but now is flourishing under the Sharma-Dravid leadership is Shreyas Iyer.
Shreyas Iyer had made his ODI and T20I debut in 2017 but was never given a consistent run in any format under the previous management. And despite being a prolific run-scorer in domestic first-class cricket, he didn’t get to make his Test debut until November last year in the absence of Kohli, Rohit, KL Rahul, and Hanuma Vihari. He had a record-breaking Test debut against New Zealand in Kanpur, slamming a century and a fifty in the same Test.
In five years since making his T20I debut in 2017, till 2021, Shreyas Iyer has featured in only 32 ODIs for India, scoring only three fifties in those games, before eventually being left out of the T20 World Cup squad with the likes of Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav preferred over him.
However, in just 4 matches under Rohit Sharma’s captaincy, Iyer slammed 3 fifties, all in consecutive games against Sri Lanka. While it is believed that Suryakumar Yadav, who missed the Sri Lanka series due to injury but was the Player of the Series against West Indies, is the preferred option in the batting order, Iyer now has become undroppable from the squad and is likely to be selected in the T20 World Cup squad.
Further, talking about his Test career, Iyer will now get a longer, consistent run under Sharma’s leadership as Pujara and Rahane became undroppable under the previous management. However, now with both the senior batters dropped, Iyer has a chance to further strengthen his position in the Test side in the upcoming Sri Lanka series.
