Johannesburg [South Africa], January 17 (ANI): Legendary South African cricketer AB De Villiers on Wednesday cautioned Indian middle-order batter Shreyas Iyer, saying that he cannot play Test cricket positively for a whole day and he will have to keep the conditions in mind.
India’s five-match Test series against England will start from January 25 onwards. Iyer is in the squad. The batter is using Ranji Trophy as a medium to prepare and impressed with a run-a-ball 48-run knock against Andhra Pradesh in Indore.
Following the match, Iyer was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo that he would play attacking cricket no matter what.
“I am going to play attacking irrespective of the situation. And also when you bowl negative, when you bowl safe and defensive at the start, you want to score runs and you need to take your team through up to a certain point. So that was my mindset and that is why stuck with it. Yeah, I was happy [with my knock] irrespective of the score,” said Iyer.
“As I said, they were bowling defensive and they did not let me play to my strengths. Even though they started with the short balls, I was able to execute them for boundaries and get a lot of runs out of it. Again, they were bowling negative so there was literally no scope to…other than leaving the ball I could not have done much. I knew that leaving the ball would, to be honest, bore me. I would rather go and play some strokes. That is what I considered then,” he added.
Now, responding to Iyer’s statements, De Villiers said that he loves watching Iyer bat but cautioned Iyer saying that Tests do not work in such a way that he plays positively throughout.
“I absolutely love watching this guy play. He is geared to play in those England Test matches with a positive mindset. I do not think there is a lot correct in the statement that you are just going to play positively no matter what situation you are confronted with. That is not how Test cricket works. But he will figure it out himself,” said De Villiers on his YouTube channel.
“I think mentally, you need to think in a positive manner. I am going to come out here today. I am going to play the match-winning innings. But Test cricket just does not allow you to bat positively for a whole day. That is the beauty about the game, you need to be able to adapt to certain situations and conditions. Sometimes you need to earn the right to play more attacking, and that is what Shreyas will certainly find out as he gets a bit more experience in Tests,” he concluded.
This series is important for Iyer to cement his spot in the team as they have opened up following the ouster of Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara. He had a great start to his Test career, scoring a century on debut. He scored 624 runs in his first seven Tests at an average of over 56, with a century and five fifties.
But after that, he hit a lean patch as in his next five Tests, he scored just 83 runs at an average of 11.85, with the best score of 31.
Squad for the first two Tests against England: Rohit Sharma (C), Jasprit Bumrah (VC), Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (WK), KS Bharat (WK), Dhruv Jurel (WK), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, and Avesh Khan. (ANI)
