Shreyas gives credit to the Master Blaster

Shreyas Iyer has been in scintillating form this season

Treated as the next big thing in Indian cricket, Shreyas Iyer gave full credit to Sachin Tendulkar’s advice just before the Ranji Trophy flagged off. Iyer is the leading scorer in the current Ranji Trophy season.

According to Shreyas, an initial session with the Master Blaster proved to be of “immense help” just before the start of Ranji Trophy.

“When Sachin sir dropped in at the Mumbai nets this season, I asked him about a specific technical problem that I was encountering. I told him that while going back and across, my shoulder tends to open up and I wanted to correct it. He advised me corrective measures. The most important of them was to stay on the front foot,” Shreyas said.

Shreyas is currently the leading run scorer with 930 runs so far in the season, with a brilliant average of 71.53 and a strike rate of 96. He has been one of the best performers this Ranji Trophy season and has been the player who is the most talked about this season.

Shreyas had a good start in his first season too, he scored 800 runs and emphasised how important it was for him to carry on the form from the first season, he added, “Before the start of the season, I was made aware about how the second season for a player becomes more important after a good first season.

“I had scored over 800 runs in my debut season and I had set a target of 1000 runs for this season. I knew bowlers will study and analyse my game after the first season and accordingly I worked on my game. I am happy that I have had a good season so far.”

Shreyas considers himself lucky to have been guided by Sachin Tendulkar and to have got Rahul Dravid as his coach when he played for India A. Shreyas has been rather attacking this season and he cherishes the moment when he scored a double hundred against Punjab.

The 21-year-old said, “It was indeed a special knock. More so because I was able to score 200 runs in a single day. I was able to dominate the bowling and this was the kind of knock at the outset, which gave me a lot of confidence.”

When asked about his attacking approach, and the quarter-finals of the Ranji Trophy scheduled to be after the Vijay Hazare Trophy, he was asked whether it would affect his momentum or not for the Quarter Finals, he replied, “Not at all as my game has been same across all formats so I have never had any problems with that.”

He is definitely one of the probable players to make it to the 30-man squad for India’s T20 world Cup side. Shreyas dreams of playing for the national side and he finally concluded saying, “Obviously, I will be happy if I make it as that’s the ultimate dream, but that is not in my hands. My job is to score runs and I would rather concentrate on that.”

The 21-year-old is just 70 runs short of scoring 1000 runs in this season and is without a doubt the future of India’s cricket.