Former Pakistan cricketer, Basit Ali, feels that Shreyas Iyer is not serious to score runs in red ball cricket anymore. He said that Iyer wasn’t even concentrating to score runs in the Duleep Trophy where he should have taken the opportunity to score a hundred or a double hundred. Ali feels that Iyer is lucky that Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara is not playing in the Duleep Trophy.
“As a cricketer, it saddens me to see him. If you are getting out in front, your concentration isn’t in the game. And especially the red-ball game. He has scored two centuries in the World Cup, he’s an IPL-winning captain, he should’ve scored 100-200 runs here. Iyer is so lucky that Rahane and Pujara aren’t playing in Duleep Trophy,” said Basit on his YouTube channel.
Iyer has been pretty inconsistent in international cricket after the end of the ODI World Cup in 2023. He has especially struggled in the red ball format where his technical deficiencies against short ball has been quite visible.
Iyer was also left out of the central contract by BCCI at the start of the year for not playing in the Ranji Trophy semi final for Mumbai. Recently, he was also not picked up in the Indian squad for the first Test match to be played against Bangladesh in Chennai, starting from September 19.
Shreyas Iyer has performed poorly in red ball cricket
Shreyas Iyer got out for a duck in the Duleep Trophy fixture on Saturday (Image Credits: X)
Iyer grabbed attention after he casually walked to bat wearing a sunglass in the Duleep Trophy game and got dismissed for a seven-ball duck. His seriousness while coming to bat has been called into question.
Ali felt that Iyer isn’t hungry enough to bat for long periods in red ball cricket and instead wants to go for the boundaries. He feels that the Indian batter should not have been in the Duleep Trophy squad given that he is not respecting the game.
“Iyer doesn’t have the hunger for red-ball cricket anymore. He’s only hungry for boundaries. You should prioritise it. If he’s thinking he is similar to Virat Kohli after hitting two centuries in World Cup, no, it doesn’t happen that way. I’m sorry to Indians who like him, but if I was India’s selector, Iyer wouldn’t have been in the Duleep Trophy at all. He’s not respecting the game,” he added.
Meanwhile, the first Test between India and Bangladesh is set to start on 19th September 2024 in Chennai.
