Shreyas Iyer Ready To Bat At Any Position For Team's Cause

Not only Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer also had to sacrifice his batting position during India’s first ODI against Australia in Mumbai on Tuesday. In order to make room for both Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul at the top of the order, India skipper Virat Kohli decided to demote himself at number four. Consequently, Shreyas Iyer was demoted from his preferred number four spot to number five.

After the World Cup, India gave Shreyas Iyer a chance to bat at number four during the West Indies tour and he made an instant mark. In both the ODIs in West Indies, he scored fifties and shared century-plus stands with skipper Virat Kohli. The Mumbai star further enhanced his reputation by slamming an impressive 62 against Bangladesh in the Nagpur T20I.

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In last month’s ODI series against West Indies at home, he scored two more fifties while batting at number four. But earlier this week, he was asked to bat at number five and the experiment failed as the right-handed batsman managed just 4. Virat Kohli could not justify batting at number four either as he managed just 16. India had gone on to lose the series-opener by ten wickets.

But while there were calls to make Shreyas Iyer bat at number four and Kohli return to number three after the heavy defeat in Mumbai, the batsman has made it clear that he does not have any problem in batting at any position for the team.

“In this situation, you should be ready to bat at any number because it is really important to play in the team, (considering) the competition which we have right now,” Iyer told reporters.

Backing his captain’s policy of rejigging the batting order, Iyer feels the time is right for India to try and experiment with things. He also did not sound too worried with the defeat and pointed out the team’s overall performance this season.

“We can’t give any reasons for batting at any particular number. Yes it is really important for us to be focused and not to cry about why we haven’t been batting at a similar position. Experimentation is something we are looking forward to. Hopefully, we will get a good number for each batsman,” he said.

“The country is not prepared to see us collapsing like that. It’s part and parcel of the game, you have to take it in your stride and move forward. We know as a team we have been playing really well throughout the season. There is a lot of learning from it,” he added.