Ranji Trophy: Shreyas Iyer withstands short-ball test, but falls short on patience

And when Iyer walked in, he expected nothing different, but Andhra were not going to be that predictable. Despite his shortcomings, Iyer is a free-flowing batsman, who prefers to be busy at all times. Even when the chips are down, he prefers in counter-attacking his way out of trouble, an approach that has yielded him results. There is a lot riding on him, especially after his struggles in South Africa, and with the Tests against England approaching, India need in an in-form Iyer in the middle-order. It was with this reason that the selectors wanted him to play red-ball cricket.

A customary flick through the mid-wicket got him going and later on, he used his feet to come down the track and loft the ball for a straight boundary of off-spinner Shoaib Mohammad Khan. Shreyas, wasn’t going to shelve his aggressive approach if anything landed in his arc. In the time he stayed in the middle, runs flowed for Mumbai as Shreyas not only found his timing back, but looked set for a big one as Andhra struggled in terms of executing their plan.

And all it took was those two boundaries for Andhra to go back to their Plan A with their pacers operating from round the stumps. They started with a couple of successive short balls that Iyer carefully negated. The only thing he had to tackle was the pace. Unlike South Africa, where he was hurried for pace, at the MCA-BKC ground he had to wait for the ball to come. As long as he was not going to be rushed, these short balls were not going to trouble Iyer. And once he got adjusted to the pace of the pitch, Iyer wasn’t going to just hang around.

Despite Andhra having a packed leg-side field with five fielders, Iyer still managed to fetch a couple of boundaries off short balls. And on both the occasions, he remained in total control of the shot. He didn’t try to use power, instead just relied on timing to direct the ball in between the tiny gaps. Andhra, then responded by having another fielder on the leg-side. They had a fielder at long leg, deep-backward square leg, deep-forward square leg, short square-leg, third man and a deep point at one point. For a batsman who likes to free his arms, this was now a test of patience.

With just two fielders on the off-side, and acres of space available, Andhra tested him by angling the ball across, hoping he would at least keep the cauldron in play. After shouldering arms to a few, Iyer finally fell into the trap as he chased a wide from Nithish Kumar Reddy, but only for wicketkeeper S Girinath to pouch a low catch. Andhra’s plan finally worked. In his 48-ball stay, he made 48 runs which included seven boundaries.

Reddy, who finished with three wickets on Day 1 said, “We had planned on bowling bouncers to Shreyas and we wanted to test his patience. We just stuck to our plans and it worked.”

Mumbai ended the day at 281 for 6 with. They could have done a lot better had their top order converted their starts. They lost opener Jay Bista after he scored 39 while Ajinkya Rahane got a big in-swinging yorker off the first ball from Reddy. With Rahane out for zero, two youngsters — Bhupen Lalwani and Suved Parkar — helped Mumbai recover. After a well compiled 61, Lalwani was bowled by Lalith Mohan. The third-wicket partnership saw them add 61 runs. Iyer and Parkar looked to steady Mumbai before the latter tried to sweep a low full toss and missed the line to be out LBW. The hosts lost wickets of Iyer and wicket-keeper batsman Prasad Pawar in quick succession as Mumbai looked shaky at 224 for 6.

It was all-rounder Shams Mulani and Tanush Kotian unbeaten stay which avoided any other hiccup.

Brief Scores: Mumbai 281 for 6 (Jay Bista 39, Bhupen Lalwani 61, Suved Parkar 41, Shreyas Iyer 48, Shams Mulani 30 not out, Tanush Kotian 31 not out, Nithish Reddy 3 for 44) vs Andhra.