By the 12th over in India D’s second innings on Saturday, India B captain Abhimanyu Easwaran had set up inventive fields, with a deep square leg, a short fine leg, and another finer fine leg in the deep. Musheer Khan was positioned at short-leg, ready to gobble up any inside edges. Suryakumar Yadav, at short fine leg, was giving advice to his teammate Mohit Avasthi, at deep fine leg. “Aadaa maarne de na usse. Kitna boundary gaya hai mid-wicket pe? (Let him hit across the line. How many fours has he hit through mid-wicket?” he pleaded to Avasthi, who had just completed the 11th over. This wasn’t frustration from Suryakumar but anticipation. India B had conceded a 67-run first-innings deficit but were smelling blood when India D was languishing at 18 for three. However, the fiery start orchestrated by Mukesh Kumar and Navdeep Saini seemed to be fizzling out thanks to Shreyas Iyer’s resilience. Shreyas had become a bit of a meme earlier in the Duleep Trophy when he fashioned his fancy Oakley glasses to the crease only to return without troubling the score in seven deliveries against India A. With 104 runs in five innings, he had failed to turn a corner with the selectors, desperately yearning for a return to India’s Test setup. His team’s dire straits offered the perfect opportunity for a last-minute plot hijack. His assured, front-footed blocks off Saini at the outset hinted that Shreyas was inclined to put himself to the rescue act. There was a one-off miscued aerial cover drive which could have stuck into the left hand of a diving Easwaran. But he realised the error and reined himself in quickly. India B placed two catching cover fielders, but it needed more to put him off his great restraint. India B, needing an outright win to stay in contention for the Duleep Trophy title, couldn’t afford to play the waiting game. While grinding through attritional passages of play may make for romanticised accounts in First-Class cricket, it wasn’t enough given their situation. Realising this, India B turned to a strategy they should have employed much earlier — bowling bouncers. There are enough accounts of Shreyas being tormented by the short ball. He has been dismissed 14 times from that length across formats in international cricket, yet he has barely been tested for it this Duleep Trophy. He averages a paltry 11.34 against short-pitched deliveries and has a dot-ball percentage of 56. Vyshak Vijaykumar of India C gave it a brief shot during the first round but did not seem too keen. Mukesh and Saini, on Saturday, had their tails up and had no qualms about persisting. What followed were edge-of-the-seat thrills as Shreyas’ defiance made way for nervy desperation even as he notched up a 37-ball fifty. He was up to the task against most bouncers – getting in position, holding his head still, and rocking back into his crease. He was swift in swaying away from their line and could duck under them as well. The ones he could not evade, he buried into the ground right in front of him, safely out of Musheer’s reach. The packed on-side field meant pulling was out of question. But this, in turn, threw him off his front-foot game. Saini probed him to the point where he pre-empted every delivery and went onto his back foot, getting stuck in his crease. It started when he slashed at a wide delivery from Saini in the 10th over with stationary feet. Avasthi’s over, the 11th off the innings, laid the flaws bare. It was when the crowd, which had turned to synchronising its applause with each run up to the crease, knew it had a contest at hand. With boundary riders deep on the on-side, Avasthi bluffed and went full on the first delivery, Shreyas’ poke away from the line took an inside edge, beat the keeper, and ran away to the boundary. The second was again full, and Shreyas was already deep in his crease, balancing on his toes. His vertical jab at the skidded delivery took the bat’s toe and beat the keeper for a second boundary. The third, much shorter in length, was read early and neatly parried past gully. And the frantic four-delivery passage was closed, with Shreyas throwing his hands at a wider one and edging through slips again. Shreyas could call off his reckless fishing outside when he got the fifth one angling into him, which he punched through extra covers for a single, again off his back foot. Without a televised production at the ground, the passage will be restricted to 16 runs off four deliveries on a scorer’s sheet, lacking its context and appeal. In the following over, Mukesh illustrated why Suryakumar wanted Shreyas to play across the line. Although Shreyas convinced himself to let two short deliveries pass to the keeper, he could not help but pull at the third one, the solitary pull in his 40-ball essay. The result was a top-edge over Suryakumar at short fine-leg. Mukesh was unwavering in his next over, and he finally got the dividends as Shreyas’ patience cracked. Shreyas instinctively going for an uppercut on this bouncer will be hardly outlandish under other circumstances. But it seemed so here, there was a third man, finer than its usual spot, placed for the very shot. India D was 93 for four, and Shreyas’ brief retaliation was halted. India B pacers worked in tandem and were able to conjure up Shreyas’ nemesis. For Shreyas, betrayed by instincts once again, it was another opportunity gone begging.
Duleep Trophy: India B’s Bouncer Strategy Exposes Shreyas Iyer’s Weakness
