CUTTACK: On the eve of the first ODI against England, some of the Indian batters were having a hit at the VCA Stadium in Nagpur. Virat Kohli and Yashasvi Jaiswal were the first to pair up as the duo had an intense session facing throwdowns. On the other side of the square were Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja playing spinners.

That is when, wearing a full-sleeve training jersey and a blue floppy hat, Shreyas Iyer walked in. He would go on to take slip catches alongside Rishabh Pant, shadow bat behind Rohit Sharma while he was taking throwdowns for the next hour. Almost as if he might not necessarily be playing. Turns out, he wasn’t. Not until late in the night, when he was watching a movie and got told by the captain that he actually might as Kohli had reported a sore right knee.

First things first though. That India decided to not play Iyer in the first place is something to be looked at before going further. The No 4 problem India have had for the better part of the previous decade in the ODI format was resolved only when the Mumbai batter came into the picture. Right from the time he made his debut, despite being in and out of the team, Iyer has made the most of every chance he got. In fact, he has done more than that.

Take all the batters who has a minimum of 1000 runs at No 4 in ODIs. There are 79 of them. Among them, Iyer is the only one to average over 50 and have a strike rate over 100. And this is a list that includes the likes Kohli, AB de Villiers, Michael Bevan, MS Dhoni, and Ross Taylor. In India’s run to the final of the 2023 home ODI World Cup, Iyer amassed 530 runs at 66.25 average and more importantly at a strike rate of 113.24. If Kohli was the anchor to Sharma’s early onslaught, Iyer was the middle-order maverick for India at the global event. His downfall in the final was in fact the turning point that helped Australia put brakes on Indian batting.