Shreyas insists he has no problem with the short stuff

Iyer, seemingly incensed at the short ball question, asked a reporter whether he had seen how many pull shots went for fours

India middle-order batsman Shreyas Iyer, who scored his second half-century of the World Cup, made it clear that countering short-pitched balls was never a problem for him considering he comes “from Mumbai, especially from Wankhede, where the bounce is pretty much even and it bounces way more than any other pitches.”

Iyer, who scored 82 against Sri Lanka on Thursday, said: “I’ve played the majority of my games here, so I know how to tackle it. It’s just that when I go to hit some shots, you are bound to get out and sometimes it may work, sometimes it may not and the majority of the time it hasn’t worked for me, maybe that’s the reason you think it’s a problem for me. But in my mind, I know there’s no problem.”

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Iyer, seemingly incensed at the short ball question, asked a reporter whether he had seen how many pull shots went for fours.

He then said: “If you’re trying to hit a ball, you’re bound to get out anyway irrespective of it being a short ball or an over-pitched one. If I get bowled two or three times, you all would say that, okay, he can’t play an in-swinging ball. He can’t play a cut if a ball is seaming.

“We as players are bound to get out on any sort of delivery. You guys have created that environment outside that he can’t play a short ball. And I feel that people are picking that up every now and then and it plays on your mind regularly and you keep working on that.”

Iyer also revealed how he built on his good start against the Sri Lankans on his home ground. “It was playing on my mind right from the start because I was getting tremendous starts in the first few games. I just wasn’t able to capitalise on what I was getting to. But today [Thursday], I just told myself that if it’s there in my area, I’m just going to take the bull by the horns. And fortunately, it worked for me and I hope that it keeps on working for me in the future as well, because the team is in a great space at the moment,” Iyer added. 

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