Shreyas Iyer

Early Days
At the institutional hub of Indian cricket, the Shivaji Park Gymkhana in Mumbai, Pravin Amre spotted a boy, not even in his teens, timing strokes against pacers twice his height off the front foot and the back foot. He nailed the cover drives and pulls with equal disdain and immediately caught the eye. This raw and evident talent was honed by the keen eye of Pravin Amre after this.

The Grind of Domestic Cricket
Having decimated bowling attacks in his college days, Iyer found a spot in the Under-19 World Cup of 2014. After a lackluster performance on the slow-ish tracks, Iyer was sent to play for the Trent Bridge cricket team in England. With the ball coming on to the bat, Iyer took full toll and shot to the limelight, scoring 297 runs in 3 innings at a Bradman-esque average of 99.

The Trent Bridge stint gave his confidence the activation energy to go on and deliver stand-out performances in the domestic tournaments to follow. He averaged more than 50 in the Vijay Hazare trophy and Ranji Trophy that followed, scoring an incredible 809 runs at 50.56 in his maiden Ranji season. In the subsequent Ranji seasons, his volume of runs bordered on the ridiculous as he amassed 1321 runs in the 2015/16 edition including 7 fifties and 4 hundreds and an unprecedented average of 73.39.