‘No one suddenly becomes a bad captain overnight’ – Wasim Jaffer comes to Shreyas Iyer’s aid after series losses in Ireland and England

India’s T20I series against England came to an end on Saturday, July 11, as the Three Lions defeated the Men in Blue at The Rose Bowl in Southampton by 56 runs to win the series 4-0.

Shreyas Iyer started his captaincy tenure with the Indian team with a 0-2 defeat to Ireland last month. Now, the four losses against Harry Brook and Co. has brought him and his team severe criticism. However, Wasim Jaffer backed Shreyas to bounce back from this debacle and said that it was a collective failure for the team. The former India opener said that the 31-year-old did decent work as captain and the results will come going forward.

“I don’t think he captained poorly. No one suddenly becomes a bad captain overnight. We’ve been praising him for a long time, and the results are there for everyone to see, especially the way he led his IPL team. This is his first opportunity to captain India in international cricket, so he’s in new territory. I think he’ll handle it. He has the confidence and self-belief to do so. He scored runs as well. Collectively, as a team, we played poorly. But I think Shreyas Iyer is not a bad choice going forward. In my opinion, he did a decent job,” Jaffer said in a video on his YouTube channel.

Jaffer said that this series was chosen by the Indian team management as a platform for youngsters to showcase their skills in unfamiliar conditions so that they can get a taste of what they could expect in the upcoming assignments, eventually leading up to the T20 World Cup in 2028 in Australia and New Zealand.

“I feel that this series was, in a way, treated as a trial. We gave opportunities to some new players, appointed a new captain, and were without Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya. We also didn’t include Kuldeep Yadav in this series. So, I think it seemed that the selectors and the coaches, especially Gautam Gambhir, wanted to try a few players and see whom they could trust going into the World Cup. It felt like the idea was to put these players into this series and see how they performed,” he added.

“That’s the impression I got” – Wasim Jaffer’s intriguing assessment after the England series

Jaffer opined that the primary objective for India during the series against Ireland and England was not winning. The cricketer-turned-commentator believes that the Indian team management wanted to give opportunities to youngsters and take note of their potential to perform in overseas conditions. Jaffer feels that this was probably done to give the management and selectors an idea of who the players are that can serve the team going forward in the long run.

“In my opinion, winning didn’t seem to be the primary focus. Of course, you always want to win, but the bigger objective appeared to be to assess how these players performed in overseas conditions. That would probably give them an answer as to whether these players are long-term prospects or whether they aren’t the right fit. That’s the impression I got from these two series. It seemed like they wanted to try out a few players and figure out which ones they could back going forward and which ones they couldn’t,” Jaffer stated.

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