Not dwell too much about what’s happened – Shreyas Iyer on looking forward to India’s next challenge

India were thumped by England in Nottingham last night as the latter secured a 2-0 cushion in emphatic fashion. The Indian batters had a forgettable night as they were bundled out for 76. The Indian captain, Shreyas Iyer, couldn’t get in much of a shift either as he fell for cheap.

Talking at the post-match presentation, Iyer opened up on the defeat and what went against them. He also highlighted the fact that a lot of discussions will be imminent, especially after getting the entire equation wrong at Nottingham. He also focused on the fact that India will be trying to come back harder as they take the yard again in 24 hours.

Shedding light on the dynamics of the game, Iyer said, “I think it was atrocious. I couldn’t use a better word, honestly. Losing by such a big margin is definitely not acceptable. First things first, I feel that we need to accept this loss and completely go back to the drawing board and see what we did wrong. Looking at the wicket, I don’t think that it was a 200 wicket, first of all, to start with. But other than that, the way we batted, we lost four (five) wickets in the powerplay. I think that itself did create the momentum, and definitely I feel that we lost over there. So, we’ve got to go back to the drawing board.”

Explaining what went wrong in the game, Iyer added, “I think you can plan a lot once you’re there in the team meeting, but once you come to the ground, you need to adapt as quickly as possible and try to figure out what lengths are important to bowl on a particular wicket. Like this (pitch) today, the hard lengths were helping the bowlers pretty well. I think we didn’t execute that much. And even in our batting, I think when you’re chasing 200, you need to pace up your innings. You need to have a set pattern of how you’re going to go about that innings. So, we fell a bit short in terms of that. So definitely, execution was awful.”

Iyer concluded with a message about the two games remaining in the series, stating, “Absolutely. As you mentioned, it’s a great opportunity to come back strong. Not dwell too much about what’s happened in the past. We’ve played awful cricket for sure, but a lot of learnings from it as well. Players have to start thinking about how to basically make an impact or create that momentum towards the team. So definitely every individual has to think by himself and see how they can win the matches and take that sort of responsibility.”