Shreyas Iyer was in the mood. The mood to eviscerate the Sri Lankan bowlers and hit them all around the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore on Saturday – and he did exactly that during his 92-run knock from 98 balls which included 10 fours and four gigantic sixes.
One of those four maximums was sent over the famous roof of the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium. Someone like AB de Villiers has often smashed the ball over the Chinnaswamy roof on the flat, batting-friendly pitch in the IPL. But, here, Iyer was doing it on the spiteful, turning, absolute dry surface that offered inconsistent bounce.
On the last ball of the 48th over, bowled by Dhananjaya de Silva, Shreyas Iyer shimmied down once again to get to the pitch of the ball, in order to not allow it to turn much, he picked the bones out of it to hammer the pink ball over deep mid-wicket. Well, the fielder was out of the question with Iyer’s power and timing; the ball went high up in the air and went over the roof out of the stadium!!
Amid the raucous crowd that was going wild, Iyer let out a big laugh as he reached his fifty with that gigantic six. Shreyas Iyer raised both arms, with the helmet in one and the bat in another, to acknowledge the crowd.
Batting at number 6, Shreyas Iyer came in at a score of 86/4, having just seen Virat Kohli being bamboozled by a ball that scooted lower than Kohli’s bat could reach. However, Iyer wasn’t frittering around with the bad balls – and they were aplenty from the Lankan bowlers – and pounced on every error in line or length.
He cut and lofted spinners Embuldeniya and Jayawickrama for his first three boundaries before whipping the former through mid-wicket for another. Despite losing Rishabh Pant at the other end, Shreyas Iyer kept on the charge- knowing that that one delivery with his name on it could be coming any time.
A patient steer behind square, a half-tracker being put away. Then came the big hits. With a couple of maximums running down off Dhananjaya de Silva, Iyer brought up his fifty off 54 balls. Took out his helmet. Bat and helmet raise, how when a batter scores a century. On this spiteful pitch, his fifty may have already won India the game.
The two left-arm spinners further conceded a six each on either side of a catch being dropped. Finally, Jayawickrama would dismiss Shreyas Iyer, when the batter jumped out of his crease again looking for his fifth six with India nine wickets down and was stumped. He felt short of his century by 8 runs but received a standing ovation from the Chinnaswamy crowd.
Watch: Shreyas Iyer smashes the biggest six of 2022 in Test cricket
— Diving Slip (@SlipDiving) March 12, 2022
