“Leaving the ball would bore me” – Shreyas Iyer will be going aggressive in upcoming red ball matches.

Indian middle-order batsman Shreyas Iyer has revealed his preference for an attacking style in Test cricket, expressing that leaving the ball “bores” him. Following Mumbai’s convincing 10-wicket victory over Andhra Pradesh in the Ranji Trophy, where Shreyas contributed a brisk 48 runs off 48 balls with seven fours, he shared his approach.

Even against what he termed as “negative” bowling, such as short deliveries or wide deliveries off the stumps, Shreyas maintained his attacking mindset. Notably, this statement follows his exclusion from India’s T20I series against Afghanistan.

Shreyas Iyer said “I’m going to play attacking irrespective of the situation,” he told reporters after the match. “And also when you bowl negative, when you bowl safe and defensive at the start, you want to score runs and you need to take your team through up to a certain point. So that was my mindset and that’s why stuck with. Yeah, I was happy irrespective of the score.”

“[As] I said, they were bowling defensive and they didn’t let me play to my strengths. Even though they started with the short balls, I was able to execute them for boundaries and get a lot of runs out of it. Again, they were bowling negative so there was literally no scope to…other than leaving the ball I couldn’t have done much. I knew that leaving the ball would, to be honest, bore me. I would rather go and play some strokes. That’s what I considered at that point of time, added the middle order batsmen.

While not directly addressing the snub, Shreyas emphasized his focus on staying in the present moment and contributing to Mumbai’s success in the domestic red-ball tournament. Regarding the upcoming five-match Test series against England, he acknowledged that the pitch in the Ranji Trophy match wasn’t as conducive to turn as expected in Tests. Despite this, Shreyas emphasized the importance of spending more time batting and on the field, especially after recovering from recent injuries. This Ranji Trophy game marked his return to the competition after over five years.