Bengaluru, March 12: Elegant batsman Shreyas Iyer, who played a brilliant innings (92) and put India in a dominant position against Sri Lanka on the opening day of the pink ball test, said on Saturday that he is disappointed to lose his century but not he has no regrets as his hit finally helped the team.
After winning the toss and opting to bat first, India was struggling at 126-5, but Iyer played a fast-break strike and powered the hosts to 252 in their opening innings. Thereafter, Sri Lanka dropped to 86-6 in their first innings on stumps, losing by 166 runs against India in a fast-paced Day 1 of the second Test at Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday.
“I’m disappointed that I missed a hundred, but if you look at it from a team perspective, we come to a very fighting total, which is 250, especially at this wicket. And seriously, I have no regrets. When I play the field, I play for the team, I don’t play for myself. The results are important for me and for my teammates, the captain, the coaches, all of them have supported me a lot and that’s what really matters”, said Iyer in the press conference after the match. match.
“And I felt like fifty was like a century because I celebrated it was like a feeling of a century for me,” he added.
During his tackles, Shreyas used his footwork to perfection. He charged down the wicket quite often, especially against spinners to deny the spin.
“My plan when I came out to bat was to reduce the spin (deny the spin), so I decided to go out. While I was standing on the middle stump, I was cutting the wicket so I could cover the spin and I can take a single in the wicket area middle and I’m confident when I do that. When you go out, you mess with the pitcher’s mind and mess up his line and length,” the slugger explained.
The 27-year-old also mentioned that one cannot continue to defend the ball on the Chinnaswamy court, where it had variable bounce, so he supported his attacking instincts.
“Players who defended the ball had a good chance of pinching it. The ball was kept low and there was variable bounce off the wicket. You can’t play negatively on this wicket, just keep defending the ball. You need to have that positive intention when you go out on the pitch. and you know the wicket is not that great and obviously bowler-friendly, so my mindset was to play every ball on its merits and make sure I got runs on every ball.” he said.