An MBA in Finance and a Rajinikanth fan, as he himself told ESPNcricinfo? Or a swashbuckling opener who has helped Kolkata Knight Riders turn around their IPL campaign? Or a medium-pacer who has been selected as a net bowler for India at the upcoming T20 World Cup?
Of course, he is all of the above, but if Knight Riders’ mentor David Hussey is to be believed Iyer is a Stephen Fleming clone as well.
Iyer wasn’t a starter when IPL 2021 kicked off in India. In fact, he didn’t get a single game back home. But after coming to the UAE, he has scored nearly 400 runs at an average over 40 and a strike rate of 125; only Ruturaj Gaikwad ( had scored more runs in this period. Iyer is also the only one to have scored a half-century at all three venues – Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi – in the UAE.
At the post-match presentation during the last game, he was asked to compare playing domestic cricket in India to plying his trade against the who’s who of world cricket in the IPL.
“There is no difference, I think,” he replied. “I have played the way I wanted to play and I am extremely delighted that the management has asked me to play that way. I don’t see any difference in what happened in the [Syed] Mushtaq Ali [Trophy], and the first-class, and what’s happening here. There is a bit more pressure but if you know how to handle that, this is a wonderful place for all of us to play cricket.
“I think for the past couple of games I was restricting myself. I was just wanting to be there till the end. Then I realised that’s not me. In believing I will be there till the end, I was losing out on the present. So I was wanted to stay in the moment and convert bad balls into boundaries and once I got the momentum, I thought this the way I should go. This is the way have been playing in the IPL and I want to keep it going.”
And what about his call-up as a net bowler for India? Is he pleased with that? “Absolutely but I am not thinking about it. There’s one more game to go and my entire focus is on that game. Of course, I got the news today but I really didn’t give it a lot of thought because [there was] a big match tonight. So I wanted to stay completely focused on it and that will be the case day after as well.”
When asked if his days in a corporate job were over, Iyer didn’t wait for the question to finish. “Absolutely. I don’t wanna go back there.”
He need not because he belongs here. (ESPN)