Former India Cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar criticized Indian skipper Rohit Sharma for his poor captaincy against Australia in the third test of the Border Gavaskar Trophy. Australia hammered India by 9 wickets to win the third test and make a comeback in the series.
Rohit Sharma’s captaincy was under the scanner in the third test, Jadeja was seen batting ahead of Shreyas Iyer in both innings and Jadeja failed to make an impact with the bat, and Rohit also took three poor DRS in the 1st innings and his decision to send Axar Patel after Ashwin also backfired for the Indian team as Axar ran out of partners in both the innings.
Cricketer-turned-commentator Sanjay Manjrekar was furious with Rohit Sharma for his tactics in the match, speaking on star sports.
“It has just disappointed me in the past and this inning as well that Jadeja came ahead of Shreyas Iyer. You can’t be doing that for a left-right combination. You’ve got a proper batter…even if he is a right-hander. And Jadeja coming in as a left-hander…I can understand when you have 2-3 left-arm spinners like Bangladesh used to have in the past.
Manjrekar feels Iyer plays spinners very well and he showed his batting capabilities over spinners said that decision to send Jadeja ahead of Shreyas Iyer was a bad decision with Australia playing two off-spinners it has been Shreyas Iyer coming in ahead
“Here you have two quality off-spinners bowling. It did not make any sense to me. Iyer has a great feel for spinners so you want him ahead in the line-up. And he has shown his class,” he said.
Nathan Lyon ran through the Indian batting on day two to end with an eight-wicket haul in the second innings and picked up 11 wickets overall in the match. Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne put up an excellent partnership to take Australia home in the third test.
Day 4 Or Day 5 Pitches Are Now Day 1 In India – Sanjay Manjrekar
Sanjay Manjrekar feels that Indian pitches are starting to behave like a fourth and fifth day on the 1st day itself and it makes batters play their shots. Most of the batters found it difficult to play as the ball was spinning and had an uneven bounce on Day 1 itself.
“A big takeaway for me in the whole 16 wickets in 2 days is that the pitch that you had earlier on day four or five are the pitches that you have now on Day 1, and that’s why it is a little difficult for batters, and that’s why the Test series is going in fast forward”.
Indore Pitch was heavily criticized by former cricketers, that these kinds of pitches are not good for red-ball cricket. Nagpur and Delhi pitches too received an average rating from ICC, all three matches were completed within three days.