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'I Was Very Angry' - Shreyas Iyer On His Short-Ball Criticism After Magical Semifinal Ton

image-lp0pzrtrShreyas Iyer slammed 105 against New Zealand [X.com]

Since the retirement of Yuvraj Singh, and Suresh Raina, Team India have struggled to find middle-order players, who consistently performed, and lived up to benchmarks set by the legends. 

Ahead of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023, Indian captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Rahul Dravid backed Shreyas Iyer, who was making a comeback from injury and had been India's most prolific ODI batter before the layoff.

Iyer's tournament started with a duck but soon followed with a fifty, but the batter failed to make any impact in India's win over Bangladesh, New Zealand, and England, respectively, despite getting starts, which invited criticism from all quarters. 

However, unfazed by all the negative chatter, Iyer hit back at all his critics and shut them down slamming four consecutive fifty+ scores, which included centuries against Netherlands, and New Zealand.

Iyer smoked a blistering century (105) against the Black Caps last evening in India's semi-final victory at Wankhede. 

Speaking to Star Sports, the former Kolkata Knight Riders captain revealed how the batter was 'angry' at all the criticism that came towards him early on. 

Here's what Iyer said

“I didn't perform good in 1-2 matches at the start of the World Cup. I was getting the starts, but wasn't able to convert them into big ones. But if you look at it (the stats), I was not out against Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then I had two bad innings. Then, people started saying that he has a problem. Inside, I was very angry, I was not showing it but I knew my time would come and then I'd prove myself. And it has come now, at the right time.”

Interestingly, Iyer is the first Indian middle-order batter to score more than 500 runs in a single edition of the World Cup.  

In the ongoing World Cup, Iyer has amassed 526 runs with two hundreds, and three half-centuries.