‘Changed Shreyas Iyer’s grip, initial movement and lift’: How Abhishek Nayar helped India’s T20I captain bounce back

MUMBAI: Since scoring 80 against England in July, India’s T20I captain Shreyas Iyer has experienced a rare slump in white-ball cricket, where he is usually very consistent, failing to break 30 in his last 10 T20I innings.Soon after landing back in Mumbai after leading India to a gold medal at the 2026 Asian Games in Japan, where he was 13 and 21 in the semi-final and final respectively, Shreyas, surely worried about his slump in form, sought out his old Mumbai team-mate, friend and ‘mentor’ Abhishek Nayar, India’s former assistant coach, currently the head coach of Koltaka.Result: Iyer smashed a brilliant 43-ball 102 not out, including six sixes and 10 fours, to set up India’s eight-wicket triumph in the opening T20I against West Indies in Lucknow.After his blistering knock, Iyer said in a video released by the BCCI on Tuesday that talking to Nayar helped his performance. “During that period (during his time in Japan) I had a brief interaction with Abhishek Nayar where we talked about cricket. I think talking to him helped me a lot in my performance today. The key note I observed in batting today was that I positioned myself before the delivery and it worked perfectly. So creating that momentum and rhythm was essential at the start of the innings and it worked quite well.”TOI has learned that Nayar went to meet Shreyas at his home in Worli, Mumbai, and the two, who go a long way, had a long conversation about what could be wrong with his bat. Nayar revealed that Iyer briefly began to doubt his ability to smash those typical massive sixes that normally sail into the crowd.A productive two-hour chat was held at Iyer’s Worli home, during which Nayar ironed out a few technicalities in Iyer’s game. “I went to meet him and he felt he hadn’t gotten the strength to hit sixes. He didn’t feel like he could hit a six. So we talked about some technical things and made some changes to his hitting. We spent two hours on his grip and backswing. I can’t tell you what exactly, but I changed his grip and backswing a little bit. I basically made a slight initial movement to his grip and backswing,” Na said.As he churned out one shot after another, Iyer looked back to his confident self on Monday. “There was no problem with his confidence or batting. He lacked the ‘feel’ to hit sixes and that was it,” claimed Nayar.It helped that over the years Nayar had kept a close eye on Iyer’s batting. “I compared his old videos and tried to set him up to what he’s normally very comfortable with. I did a little bit of that and set him up. It’s such an old relationship. It’s such an understanding that it doesn’t take that much time,” said the former India and Mumbai all-rounder.Since resuming his role as T20I captain this year, Iyer has scored 511 runs in 17 innings at an average of 39.30 and a strike rate of over 149, including one century and two fifties.