The Indian cricket team today is one of the most successful and one of the most strongest team in the world of cricket. Indian teams batting depth have majorly improved over the years, all thanks to the IPL and the strong Indian domestic circuit and youth development.
Today, any Indian player who doesn’t make the Playing XI during a match, could easily a first team starter for any other team in the world of the bat and ball game. India have over the years produced some of the great players in the world, the likes of Virat Kohli, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, MS Dhoni are just like a drop of sea.
Team India, under the new guideline of Rahul Dravid started off 2022 poorly but has improved really well over the month and today is maintaining a great series winning streak. Almost all of the players are contributing to that. However, there are still some players who are not going through a good one, such as Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer.
Shreyas Iyer was considered as a answer to Team India’s all the middle-order issues. But, even though starting off 2022 to a great note, he has suffered a massive drop in form after the IPL 2022. Teams have identified short-balls as his weakness, which was very firstly exploited by KKR head coach and now England Test team head coach.
With him now out of form and new middle-order batsmen emerging, Shreyas has been dropped from Team India’s squad for the Asia Cup 2022. Meanwhile, while speaking about Shreyas Iyer, former India fielding coach R Sridhar made a big revelation of how former India Head coach Ravi Shastri identified Iyer’s weakness in just one ball.
While speaking to Cricket.com, R Sridhar revealed that Iyer’s weakness against short-balls exists from the year 2018 when he made his India debut. Sridhar revealed that after making his debut against Sri Lanka, he was part of India’s squad for the South Africa series and played the 4th match of the series. He added that during that match, M Morkel tested Iyer in that match with a short-ball and Iyer had to fend it off to third man.
“He went up to bat against Morne Morkel and straightaway he (Morkel) tested him out with a short ball and he fended it to third man,” Sridhar said. He further added that after seeing that, then India head coach Ravi Shastri, who was sitting beside him, told him, “Ravi Shastri was sitting besides me… and he said ‘Sree, ye bachhe pe bahut kaam karna padega’. Shastri saw just one ball.”
