Power, stance and backlift: how Iyer took his ball-striking to new heights

Since his last-minute inclusion in the first match of the home ODI series against England in February, Shreyas Iyer has been playing match-winning, as well as impact, innings both for India and, in the past two months, in IPL 2025 where he is captain of Punjab Kings. The latest example of that came on Sunday evening in Ahmedabad, where Iyer batted like a man possessed: his undefeated 87 helped PBKS make only their second IPL final, and the first since 2014. It was a remarkable effort as Iyer responded under pressure to bring down five-time champions Mumbai Indians.

Iyer was the second-highest run-scorer in both the England ODIs as well as the Champions Trophy, and is now sixth among the leading run-makers in IPL 2025. His success is not by accident.

About a week prior to the first ODI against England, played in Nagpur on February 6, Iyer had a three-day session in his hometown of Mumbai with former India batter Pravin Amre, who has been his long-term coach, since when he was 12. The primary focus, Amre said, was to tinker with the basic set-up in Iyer's stance and make him more balanced to respond to any type of delivery.

"His issue was his base. His back [right] leg was collapsing in his trigger movement," Amre told ESPNcricinfo in April.

As a result of the leg collapsing, Amre pointed out, the head followed automatically, and Iyer lost his balance. What would also end up happening was that his right heel would be dragging outside leg stump and, with his head falling away, Iyer was vulnerable to all threats including failing to play the short delivery well.

The challenge, though, was how to adapt to the new technique Amre was suggesting: how could he change something that had been lodged in his muscle memory?

Amre assured Iyer that the purpose was not to "disturb" his overall technique, but it was to "add" something that would enhance his batting.

"I had to undo that [the set-up]. The word I used was correction. I told him I'm correcting you to get you in better position, so that you get a better feel with the bat while playing the strokes."

While the general impression from outside is that Iyer had opened up his batting stance, allowing him to better tackle the shorter ball, which has been his Achilles heel forever, Amre said that the change was not recent. It was about a year ago when Iyer moved from a side-on to a more open stance. Amre said that had allowed Iyer to watch the ball better and with the tweaked stance, it allowed Iyer to stand tall and respond confidently. "Previously the ball was dominating him; now he can dominate the ball."

The best examples of the success of the January work with Amre were the successive sixes Iyer hit off Jofra Archer in the Nagpur ODI. Jos Buttler stood at short leg, so Iyer was aware of the short-ball plan. But when Archer pitched on a hard length on the fifth-stump line, Iyer quickly got in line to pull the ball high over deep midwicket. Next ball, Archer ramped up the pace to nearly 143kph, but it was once again wide outside the stump, so Iyer moved closer to it and, on raised toes, cut hard over the deep-third boundary.

Probably because of the new set-up, one distinct change between the 2024 and 2025 IPL seasons is that Iyer is now playing the ball later, especially against fuller and good-length deliveries. According to HawkEye data, his average interception point with the ball in 2024 was 1.65m in front of the stumps. This year, it is 1.50m.

During the January sessions, Iyer also fine-tuned his backlift. Unlike the traditional backlift, where the bat comes straight down, Iyer's bat is now coming down more from the direction of gully. Amre said it was similar to the loop used to hit a forehand in tennis, essentially to derive more power. While it is still work in progress, over the last few months Iyer has dealt with the short ball in white-ball cricket more effectively, including in the IPL, as the numbers below show.

"That is why now you can see he hits the short ball more powerfully."

Amre, who was with Delhi Capitals (DC) until IPL 2024 for nearly a decade, has seen Iyer from his pre-teen years, and has coached him at his academy at Shivaji Park. It was Amre who had convinced the DC thinktank to recruit Iyer as he felt the Mumbai batter, uncapped then in the IPL, could become a long-term player for the franchise. Iyer did lead DC from halfway through the 2018 season and paired successfully with then head coach Ricky Ponting to take the franchise into the playoffs in 2019 and then the final in 2020.

During his time as coach at Seattle Orcas in MLC in 2023, Amre noticed how baseball players derived maximum power with a static base. He felt he could utilise some of those observations in his work with Iyer.

"Without momentum, the baseball hitters generate great power and the ball goes far. One factor is they work more on the core muscles," Amre said. "With Shreyas, I wanted him to get optimum power behind his strokes, specifically against spinners, so he could clear the boundary."

To strengthen the core, Amre got Iyer to hit against weighted balls, also known as sandballs, which can weigh between 150-350 grams - as compared to the 163-gram limit set by the MCC for cricket balls - and are harder to hit far. But with practice, batters start to get the power and can hit through the line of the ball farther with faster hand-speed.

According to Amre, to enhance the power-hitting ability, he told Iyer to imagine Kieron Pollard was standing at long-on, and the challenge was to clear him. Pollard was among the best fielders in those hot zones where he could intercept boundaries using his height as well as his highly athletic body. "The idea was to help Shreyas in not being afraid to hit over Pollard despite him being the world's best fielder."

Amre sees himself as a craftsman who will continue to chisel at his work, in this case Iyer, to make him a better batter. And the reason he knows he is doing the right thing is because of what Iyer told him at the end of the January sessions. "I was very happy when Shreyas said, 'Sir, now I can take on anybody'."