By Karan Agrawal 
India got off to a winning start in the three-match ODI series against England with a comprehensive win in the first match courtesy of half-centuries from the bat of Shreyas Iyer, Shubman Gill, and Axar Patel. Chasing 249 runs to win India got off to a shaky start with the opening duo of debutant Yashasvi Jaiswal and captain Rohit Sharma was dismissed inside the first 10 overs with just 19 runs on the board. The onus was on the pair of young batters Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer to bail India out of trouble and they did just that with an attacking partnership of 94 runs.
The Counterattack
Iyer in particular was more aggressive of the two as the right-hander raced to his half-century and scored 59 runs of 36 balls with the help of 9 fours and 2 sixes. Iyer was severe against Jofra Archer who tried to dismiss him by bowling bouncers at a rapid pace but Iyer preampted the short ball tactic and was ready for the challenge as he pulled and cut Archer to the boundary.
The Revelation
Following his match-winning innings Shreyas Iyer revealed that he wasn’t supposed to play the match and it was only due to the injury to former Indian captain Virat Kohli he got a chance in the playing XI. “It’s actually a funny story. I was watching the movie last night. I thought that I could extend my nighttime. Then I got a call from the skipper saying that I may play because Virat has got a swollen knee, and I hurried back to my room and went off to sleep straight. So we didn’t know that,” Iyer said.
The Reason
Former Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh was in awe of Iyer’s innings in the first ODI as he looked in complete control of his strokes against some quality bowling from the English pacers. Reacting to Iyer’s revelation Harbhajan said that Iyer is a wonderful player but the only reason to drop Iyer would have been to give Yashasvi a chance to maintain the left-right combination at the top of the order. “The team management has selected him in the squad but they had to decide whether they want to go with him or Yashasvi Jaiswal at the top. I think the team is currently trusting Yashasvi more. Maybe the management is looking to have a right-left combination up top. This is how the team went. But I think if the management wanted not to play Shreyas, then the only reason was to have Yashasvi Jaiswal up top,” Harbhajan Singh told Hindustan Times.
The Praise
Harbhajan reckoned that there was some kind of divine intervention during Iyer’s innings in the first ODI “Shreyas is a proven performer. He scored a lot of runs in the World Cup. When a player scores so many runs, he thinks he will get opportunities. He is the best in his eye and hence, even God felt the same. He got what no one else thought and what someone else thought for Shreyas, but that didn’t happen. The player whom you were thinking about dropping, played such an inning, he made it a one-sided game. The 50 runs he scored, changed the complexion of the game.”