"He needs to improve batting against pace" -Irfan Pathan hits out at Indian star batsman

After facing two defeats in the opening two games, the home team showed really good character and won their next two games. Notably, the Indian cricket board also wants to give maximum chances to the players to find the right combination for the upcoming T20I World Cup in Australia.

Although in this experiment, a few flaws also came to light in terms of recognition. The "Man of the Series" in the last T20I series against Sri Lanka, Shreyas Iyer, looked a bit tentative against the pace bowler at the start of his innings. He hasn't carried on his form and registered scores of 35, 40, 14, and 4 so far.

Former Indian all-rounder Irfan Pathan reckons that the right-hander has some issues facing pace bowlers. In a discussion on Star Sports, Irfan said that Shreyas had struggled against pace earlier in this series as well. He highlighted the recent IPL season and said that the strike rate of the KKR skipper is lower against pace as compared to spin.

The former all-rounder added, "if you are bowling less than 140 kph, he is very much comfortable. But the one area of his game he needs to improve is facing the fast bowlers, especially when the ball comes close to his shoulders."

However, Irfan believes that Shreyas can work on this issue and will improve because he has been in really good form. The all-rounder said that the right-hander is a really mature batsman and has an average of over 50 on the domestic circuit in the first class.

The ex-all-rounder concluded that Shreyas had done a good job in whatever opportunities he had got at No. 3 and also had some good innings under his belt in the last few months. The right-hander will join the Indian test side for England for the one-off Test after the fifth T20Is.

He will look to have a significant innings in the decider of the series to gain confidence.