Shamik Chakrabarty
Should Shreyas Iyer be part of India’s Test squad for the England tour? Dilip Vengsarkar, the former India captain who also served as chief selector, remained non-committal. The No. 4 position in India’s batting order has fallen vacant following Virat Kohli’s Test retirement. There’s a school of thought that Shubman Gill should bat there, giving up his No. 3 position to Sai Sudharsan. Asked about this, Vengsarkar shouldered arms.
“Shreyas is a brilliant cricketer,” he told RevSportz. “He has been scoring runs, but to come to a conclusion that he should be part of the Test squad, you need to watch him in domestic and international cricket. I haven’t done that and hence leaving it to the selectors to decide.”
Shreyas made his Test debut in 2021 and gradually became a regular in that format over the next two-and-a-half years. But back spasms played spoilsport and forced him out of the side during the home series against England last year. Then, his central contract was taken away under the pretext of not playing a Ranji Trophy match, at a time when he was being affected by back spasms after facing just 60 balls at the nets.
But the 30-year-old is a bolshy personality, not a shrinking violet. He gritted his teeth and guided Kolkata Knight Riders to the IPL title last term. By dint of his performance, Shreyas earned a recall to India’s ODI side and returned to the list of centrally contracted cricketers this season. Non-inclusion in the India A squad for the matches against England Lions, however, suggests that the selectors still aren’t considering him for the longer format.
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Shreyas probably was a victim of misunderstanding. When he skipped the Ranji Trophy game during the 2023-24 season, nobody wanted to hear his side of the story. After KKR’s title triumph, all the credit was given to the team’s erstwhile mentor Gautam Gambhir, who is now India’s head coach with apparently a football-style managerial authority.
Sunil Gavaskar recently spoke about that. “He (Shreyas) didn’t get the credit for the IPL victory last season,” the legendary former India captain said on Star Sports. “All the plaudits were given to someone else. It’s the captain who plays a major role in what’s happening in the middle and not someone sitting in the dug-out. See, this year he is getting fair credit. No one is giving all the credit to Ricky Ponting.”
Shreyas is arguably the best captain of this IPL, the way he has led Punjab Kings – the penny-wise and pound-foolish retention/auction strategy of KKR had let go of their title-winning captain – to the playoffs. And he has led by example, scoring 435 runs in 12 innings at an average of 48.33 and a strike rate of 174.69. More importantly, in the context of red-ball cricket, he had an excellent 2024-25 Ranji Trophy season, with 480 runs from five matches at an average of 68.57, including two hundreds.
It’s now pretty clear that the selectors will not go back to the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara and/or Ajinkya Rahane. But Shreyas is certainly not someone who is past his international (read, Test cricket) sell-by date. Arguably the best Indian player against spin, the Mumbai batsman has improved a lot against fast bowling also of late. “Shreyas is a smart cricketer,” said Vengsarkar. “He is someone who works very hard to improve his game.”
Vengsarkar, the ‘Lord of Lord’s’, with three Test hundreds at the ‘home of cricket’, knows a thing or two about batting in England.