Batter Shreyas Iyer on Friday became only the 16th Indian cricketer to hit a century on his Test debut. Iyer achieved the feat during the second day of the ongoing Test between India and New Zealand at the Green Park Stadium in Kanpur. With his knock during India's first innings, Iyer joined Lala Amarnath, Deepak Shodhan, AG Kripal Singh, Abbas Ali Baig, Hanumant Singh, Gundappa Vishwanath, Surender Amarnath, Mohammad Azharuddin, Pravin Amre, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Suresh Raina, Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and Prithvi Shaw as the Indian players with a century on Test debut.
"Good start to the test career @ShreyasIyer15," Rohit Sharma, who last week guided India to a 3-0 win over the Kiwis in the T20I series, also tweeted.
"A magnificent innings under pressure from #ShreyasIyer. Showed great maturity, composure and class and becomes the 16th Indian to Score Century on Test Debut. Well Played @ShreyasIyer15. Many more to come!" former India batter VVS Laxman tweeted.
"100 on debut that to came at the difficult stage #ShreyasIyer," former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan wrote on Twitter.
Iyer's exploits helped India to stitch a first innings total of 345. For New Zealand, Tim Southee bagged a fifer while Kyle Jamieson and Ajaz Patel took three and two wickets, respectively.
In reply, New Zealand were 129/0 at stumps on day two with openers Will Young (75*) and Tom Latham (50*) hitting half-centuries.