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Mumbai captain Shreyas Iyer has requested batter Prithvi Shaw to implore and improve his work ethic. Shreyas’ comments came after Mumbai won the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy on Sunday, December 15, comfortably beating Madhya Pradesh by 5 wickets.
Speaking after the final, Shreyas reacted to Shaw’s woeful run, and controversy-filled season, where he was dropped from the Mumbai team despite winning the Ranji Trophy. Iyer called Shaw a God-gifted talent and said that the sky was the limit for the player.
Prithvi Shaw, once a hot property in Indian cricket, went unsold in the Indian Premier League mega-auction in 2024. The snub came after a terrible Ranji Trophy season where he scored 59 runs in 4 innings in Mumbai’s title winning run.
Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy Final: Report
In fact, in the SMAT 2024, Shaw yielded a modest 197 runs at an average of 21.88, with a solitary impactful knock – a 26-ball 49 in Mumbai’s quarterfinal chase against Vidarbha.
“I think, personally, he is a God-gifted player. The amount of talent he possesses as an individual, no one has it. That’s true. It’s just that he needs to improve his work ethics. And I have said it before as well in many of the interviews. He needs to get his work ethics right. And if he does that, you know, sky is the limit for him. Can you force him to? I can’t force him. He has played so much of cricket. And everyone has given him inputs. At the end of the day, it’s his job to go out there and figure out things for himself,” Shreyas Iyer told the reporters after their SMAT win.
KAIF’S COMMENTS ON PRITHVI SHAW
Earlier, former Delhi Capitals assistant coach – Mohammed Kaif – who has seen Prithvi Shaw from close quarters, had said that the batter should be embarrassed of himself that no franchise wanted to buy him in the IPL auction.
“Delhi backed Prithvi Shaw a lot. DC had hoped that he is a powerplay player and would hit 6 boundaries in one over. And he did that too. He hit Shivam Mavi for 6 fours in an over. He had a lot of potential and DC backed him to the hilt. We always thought that if Shaw manages to score, we will win. And we gave him a lot of chances,” Mohammed Kaif said on Jio Cinema during the IPL auction.
“There were meetings in the night where we would sit and ponder if Prithvi should play or not because he has been failing. So at night we would decide that Prithvi would not be in the playing XI, and then later on the day of the match, we would change our decision – that, no he will because maybe if he goes big, we would win,” Kaif narrated a team selection story.
“Prithvi got a lot of chances and teams have now finally moved on, and it is a matter of embarrassment that he did not get a bid for Rs 75 lakh. Maybe now, he finally goes back to basics. Someone like Sarfaraz Khan got into the national team by scoring lots and lots of runs,” the former India cricketer concluded.
Iyer echoed similar sentiments, stating that it was not possible to babysit a grown man.
“We can’t babysit anyone, right? Every professional who is playing at this level, they need to know what they should be doing. And he has also done it in the past. It’s not that he hasn’t. He has to focus. He has to sit back, put a thinking cap on and then figure out himself. He will get the answer. No one can force him to do anything,” Shreyas Iyer concluded.
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