Former Indian Test opener Wasim Jaffer has put his weight behind Shreyas Iyer after series losses against Ireland and England. India’s T20I team got off to a poor start under Iyer’s captaincy, as the team suffered a 0-2 series loss against Ireland and then suffered a 0-4 series loss against England.
The visitors could not come up with a collective performance throughout the two series and failed to execute as a team. India was not up to the mark in all three departments of the game, and it led to their downfall.
However, Iyer was able to lead from the front as he scored 218 runs in five matches against England. He was the only Indian batter to score more than 150 runs against the hosts.
Wasim Jaffer said on his YouTube Channel, “I don’t think he captained poorly. No one suddenly becomes a bad captain overnight. We’ve been praising him for a long time, and the results are there for everyone to see, especially the way he led his IPL team. This is his first opportunity to captain India in international cricket, so he’s in new territory. I think he’ll handle it. He has the confidence and self-belief to do so. He scored runs as well. Collectively, as a team, we played poorly. But I think Shreyas Iyer is not a bad choice going forward. In my opinion, he did a decent job.”
Iyer was given the captaincy after he impressed one and all with his leadership in the IPL.
Jaffer said this series was treated as a trial as a number of new players were given their chances.
He said, “I feel that this series was, in a way, treated as a trial. We gave opportunities to some new players, appointed a new captain, and were without Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya. We also didn’t include Kuldeep Yadav in this series. So, I think it seemed that the selectors and the coaches, especially Gautam Gambhir, wanted to try a few players and see whom they could trust going into the World Cup. It felt like the idea was to put these players into this series and see how they performed.”
The former Vidarbha captain reckons winning was not team management’s top agenda on the UK tour as they wanted to test some of their rookie players.
“In my opinion, winning didn’t seem to be the primary focus. Of course, you always want to win, but the bigger objective appeared to be to assess how these players performed in overseas conditions. That would probably give them an answer as to whether these players are long-term prospects or whether they aren’t the right fit. That’s the impression I got from these two series. It seemed like they wanted to try out a few players and figure out which ones they could back going forward and which ones they couldn’t.”
India and England will next take on each other in a three-match ODI series, starting Tuesday at Edgbaston, Birmingham.
