No short-ball issues: Upskilled Shreyas Iyer raises the game

The No 4 batter wasn't a sure starter in India's initial Champions Trophy plans, but his hard work behind the scenes is paying off

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DUBAI: The longer the gap between your mistakes, the more likely you are to find success in the sporting world. There are no double takes and if you keep failing in the same way, there is always someone else ready to step up.

Shreyas Iyer knows how that feels. He ceded his place in the Test team to Sarfaraz Khan and is still looking for a way back. And a back injury combined with a weakness against the short ball saw even his place in ODIs being questioned.

But now that the right-hander from Mumbai is back among the runs, he is slowly but surely sending a message across to opposition - the short ball is not a problem any more. Proof enough are scores of 59, 44, 78, 15 and 56 in his last five ODI innings. His perceived weakness was attacked but he chose to counter-attack.

A good short ball will, truth to be told, trouble most batters. But Iyer realised that overcoming this weakness against the short ball is a slightly different proposition to working on off-stump technique. For starters, an ill-equipped batter is in clear danger of being hurt.

Iyer's losing his central contract at the start of the year, unwelcome as it was, gave him the time to work with long-time personal coach Pravin Amre. The two of them would work in tandem during the last Ranji season, the former India batter, based in Mumbai, a phone call away. Iyer knew, he was always going to find takers in the IPL. Getting his India career up and running was the bigger goal.