Former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar never shy away from speaking his heart about the gentlemen’s game. For the same, the former cricketer always finds himself at the receiving end of criticism and trolling. It was during the 2019 ODI World Cup when Manjrekar stirred an ugly controversy by citing that the Indian all-rounder is still a ‘bits and pieces’ cricketer.
His remarks didn’t go down well with the Indian star all-rounder, who questioned Sanjay Manjrekar on reaching his half-century during the World Cup semi-finals encounter. Since then, both of them haven’t been on the same page. However, that didn’t stop Manjrekar from calling out on Jadeja, time and again.
Now, after the Indian cricket team lost the World Test Championship Final to New Zealand, Manjrekar once again blamed Jadeja. Recently, in an interview, Manjrekar said that India missed a trick by picking Ravindra Jadeja as a batsman and he feels the same backfire for India.
For the unversed, Ravindra Jadeja returned with 15 and 16 runs in both innings and picked a solitary wicket in the WTC Final. Manjrekar claimed that team India needed to pick specialist players in the team. He claimed:
“If you have to look at how India went about before the game started, picking two spinners was always a debatable selection especially when the conditions were overcast and the toss was delayed by a day. They picked one player for his batting, which was Jadeja, and his left-arm spin wasn’t the reason he was picked. He was picked for his batting and that is something that I am always against,”
He added:
“You have got to pick specialist players in the team and if they felt that the pitch was dry and turning, they would have picked Jadeja for his left-arm spin, along with Ashwin, that would have made sense. But they picked him for his batting and I think that backfired as mostly it does,”
