"Leaving the ball would bore me" - Shreyas Iyer
Indian middle-order batter Shreyas Iyer has stated that leaving the ball in Tests "bores" him as he prefers playing his shots even against negative bowling.
The right-handed batter's comments came after Mumbai's 10-wicket win over Andhra Pradesh in the Ranji Trophy. He got only one chance to bat in the game and scored a run-a-ball 48 with the aid of seven fours while batting at No. 5.
Even when Andhra bowlers went short against him from around the wicket or bowled wide off the stumps, which he called "negative", Shreyas played his shots.
"I'm going to play attacking irrespective of the situation," he told reporters after the match. "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's why stuck with. Yeah, I was happy irrespective of the score."
"[As] I said, they were bowling defensive and they didn't 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 couldn't have done much. I knew that leaving the ball would, to be honest, bore me. I would rather go and play some strokes. That's what I considered at that point of time," he added.
Having been dropped from India's T20I series against Afghanistan, Shreyas joined Mumbai for the premier domestic red-ball tournament. He didn't speak about the snub directly and just said he wanted to stay in the moment and help Mumbai win and not think about selections as they were not in his control.
His next big assignment would be the five-match Test series against England. Shreyas admitted that the pitch for the match against Andhra at the Sharad Pawar Cricket Academy wasn't as big a turner as India would expect for the Tests.
However, he said that it was important for him to spend more time batting and on the field after a couple of injury lay-offs recently. This was also Shreyas' first Ranji Trophy game in over five years.
"I love competition" - Shreyas Iyer
Recent reports have suggested that India would look to bring a specialist wicketkeeper, most probably KS Bharat, for the Tests and use KL Rahul only as a batter.
This would pit Rahul in direct competition with Shreyas Iyer, who didn't have a good Test series in South Africa, for just one middle-order spot.
"It's fun. I love competition, and when competition is there, you face more challenges. And that's what I thrive on personally. So I enjoy having competition around because then you can go at each other and also against the opponents to show your talent and skills," Shreyas stated.
The India-England Test series starts on January 25 in Hyderabad.