BENGALURU: Often players in their subconscious mind know how they feel about a particular situation but when the validation comes from someone who they can rely upon, the next step becomes easier.
Former India batter and renowned coach Pravin Amre for a long time has been a sounding board for Shreyas Iyer, having been his coach from early teenage years. A chance meeting between student and the teacher at the Wankhede Stadium ahead of the Sri Lanka game did work as a boost.
Couple of dismissals off short balls against New Zealand and England did increase a lot of pressure on the talented Mumbaikar, who had come into the team after a long back injury lay-off and repeated talks about his technique wasn't a good thing.
"The Sri Lanka game was a very important one for him. Everyone was talking about the dismissals but he handled that phase very well," Amre told PTI after his ward scored an unbeaten 128 off 94 balls against the Netherlands.
His sequence of scores in the last three games has been 82, 77 and 128 not out.
"As his coach, I would always say there is room for improvement but what I wanted to see is consistency in a big event like the World Cup. Back to back fifties and now a hundred, it is a good confidence builder before the knock-out games," said Amre, who was a part of India's 1992 World Cup squad.
For Amre, this whole perception of Iyer not being a good player of short ball, is just a misconception.
"I believe it is outside noise and he need not pay heed to it. If Shreyas had technical problems, he wouldn't have played more than 100 plus games across formats for India. But a big credit goes to Indian team management, which always showed complete faith in his abilities," said Amre, who played 11 Tests and 37 ODIs for India between 1991 and 1994.
"One can get carried away but the team management knows how important it is to have a stable No. 4 when you are playing with six specialist batters," he observed.
However if you are human, you are bound to get affected by constant criticism and Amre decided to check on his student when the Indian team landed in Mumbai for the Lanka game.
"I just told him a simple thing. Let people say what they want, you do your job. I told him that if you play 10 years for India, every time you get out to a short ball, people will say the same thing. But if you play 10 years for India, that means you have performed," the coach said.
So has there been a technical glitch in Iyer's technique while playing short ball and should he avoid pull-shot looking at percentages of success?
"No, why should he stop playing pull-shots? He is a tall man and he can play the pull. There is nothing wrong with his technique but execution wasn't great. So it was an error in judgement as far as shot selection is concerned, not head position or feet movement," Amre said.
Amre said that his philosophy of coaching is to allow his students to find solutions and help them in that process.
"I have always provided moral support to my students Ajinkya (Rahane) and Shreyas. After your students attain a certain level, you need to listen to them and allow them to make their own decisions," Amre said.
