Calling the century “special,” Iyer said: “Coming back after a very long time, obviously I was feeling a bit down with my injuries, but now getting a century after a very long time, it’s a great feeling.
“I am absolutely keen for a [Test] comeback but yeah, as we say, control the controllables and my job is to keep performing and keep participating as much as possible and also see with that my body is in best shape. So I’ll take the best decision possible according to that.”
“Not anymore,” he said. “But there was this phase where I was feeling that it might occur again. But yeah, I trained a lot to see to it that I have optimum fitness and obviously it comes here and there, but now my capacity has improved a lot.”
And how did he get his body there?
“Training. Yeah, obviously I improved my long-distance running and that’s what I wanted to. You know, increase my patience as well in terms of the longer format and according to that I was training. [I did] intensive training like I was stressing up my body, like pushing my body 400-800 meters of running and I was trying to push my limits and seeing to it that I was at the best fitness possible.
[Earlier], even when I would sit for long, stand for long, the back would get stiff automatically and yeah, basically that’s what I wanted to improve on.”
Did the fitness issues and how he thought “nobody was agreeing,” create an inaccurate perception about him for Test cricket?
“See, I had addressed my feeling during the longer format and things didn’t go my way,” he said, implying that he was willing to put it behind him. “But I’ve also addressed it in the previous interviews I’ve given and I’m in a good space right now. I’m doing what I’m meant to do, that is training and playing matches consistently and I feel that all the matches I’ve played right now in the past have helped me gain that fitness level as well, along with my training.”
Playing his sixth first-class match in a row in the last six weeks, Iyer said, “The body has taken a lot of load at the same time. So we have to manage here and there and see to it that I strategise in terms of how I play. Now I have to be smart in terms of what decisions I take, I need to see to it that my body is in the best shape possible. As I mentioned previously as well, I have to decide according to that, no matter whatever people think outside. I have to listen to my body because I know the amount of threshold carried over the last few years and based on that, I’ll be taking the right decision, and I hope that my team will also back [that].”
“You win three championships in a year, and what else can you ask for? All I see is the positive things over here and that is winning the trophy and that’s what I want.”
Shreyas Iyer on missing out on India A squad for the Australia tour
“Nowadays when the teams come up, they straightaway put a defensive field right from ball one,” he said. “So I was just trying to take some time, in between trying to play more balls than scoring shots, so that was my plan. Play session by session and try to see how much my body can take. When I said that I played a few matches in the past, that was the reason where I got to know that I can smash every ball, but at the same time I have to bat longer if I want my body to be ready for any situation provided by the opposition. And yeah, we faced many challenges in the past.
After the game against Maharashtra, Iyer will play three more league games Mumbai are slotted to play this year before the Ranji Trophy season will be paused for the 50-over and 20-over white-ball tournaments. It might be a little far-fetched to say that Iyer will be a strong contender for the Australia tour, having not been named in the India A squad for the two red-ball games starting October 31.
Does Iyer feel he has had a mixed bag of chocolates this year?
“You win three championships in a year, and what else can you ask for? All I see is the positive things over here and that is winning the trophy and that’s what I want.”
Vishal Dikshit is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
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