Shreyas Iyer: 'Leaving the ball would bore me'

According to Indian middle-order batsman Shreyas Iyer, abandoning the ball during a Test match "bores" him since he likes to play his shots, especially when there is negative bowling.

Following Mumbai's Ranji Trophy victory over Andhra Pradesh by a margin of 10 wickets, the right-handed batsman made these remarks. In his lone batting opportunity of the match, he batted at No. 5 and used 7 fours to score 48. Shreyas played his shots, even when Andhra bowlers went short against him from around the wicket or bowled wide off the stumps, which he referred to as "negative".

"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.

After being left out of India's T20 International series against Afghanistan, Shreyas signed up for Mumbai's main domestic red-ball competition. He claimed he wanted to be in the present and assist Mumbai to win rather than worrying about selections because he was not in charge of them, without specifically addressing the rejection.

England's 5-match Test series would be his next major task. Shreyas conceded that the Sharad Pawar Cricket Academy pitch wasn't as much of a roller coaster as India would have liked for the Test series against England.

But following a few recent injury layoffs, he stated that he needed to spend more time in the field and at bat. Additionally, it was Shreyas' first Ranji Trophy match in more than five years.

"I love competition" - Shreyas Iyer

According to recent speculations, India may try to bring a specialist wicketkeeper for the Test matches - KS Bharat, most likely—and limit KL Rahul's role to that of a batter.

Rahul would then be directly competing for one middle-order position against Shreyas Iyer, who didn't have a great Test series in South Africa.

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

The IND vs ENG test series is scheduled for January 25.