Shreyas Iyer has endured a challenging start as India's T20I captain, with India struggling to find momentum and suffering defeats in every match during his tenure so far. With all the results going against India, the transition has been even more demanding. Under his captaincy, India suffered a historic series loss to Ireland before England followed it up with a dominant series victory. These defeats have also seen India lose their position at the top of the ICC T20I rankings. On Saturday, India went down against England by 56 runs in the fifth and final T20I, with England clinching the series 4-0. Iyer, meanwhile, has encouraged the squad to maintain confidence and continue working towards improvement.
"It's not hard, honestly. I feel it's a privilege for me to take over the captaincy. Every individual dreams of captaining for the Indian team. And taking on from high, definitely I love pressure, and I feel it's a privilege," Iyer said at the press conference after India's series defeat against England.
"So for me to thrive under pressure, to learn from these moments is definitely going to make me better going forward. And that's my mindset right now. Not thinking much about how people are going to think about this particular series because see, good and bad, it's part and parcel of this game."
"Going forward, I need to be extremely positive in how I'm going to basically nurture everyone who is playing around me, especially in overseas conditions. We know we are going to play in Australia and many other series before that. So the best camaraderie to fit in these conditions is our goal and going forward, that is going to be our plan."
One of the biggest challenges, Iyer explained, has been adapting to English conditions.
"We kept on going from one venue to another, and we kept on facing challenges, especially in terms of the dimensions, the grounds, the conditions. Just to adapt to it as quickly as we could have anticipated… that didn't happen. That was one challenge. And the other one is definitely they outplayed us in all departments, I would say. So I think the combinations of all these points definitely led to this result."