Sanjay Manjrekar weighed in on Ravindra Jadeja’s selection in India’s XI for the WTC final, saying that playing the all-rounder for his batting was a gamble India took but it never paid off.
Sanjay Manjrekar feels India missed a trick by including Ravindra Jadeja in the Playing XI for the World Test Championship final against New Zealand, which they lost by eight wickets.
Sanjay Manjrekar: Picking 2 Spinners A Debatable Selection In Overcast Conditions
Ravindra Jadeja picked up one wicket in the match and scored 15 and 16 in both innings as India failed to put up a solid score, and Sanjay Manjrekar weighed in on the all-rounder’s selection saying that playing the 32-year-old for his batting was a gamble India took but it never paid off.
Ravindra Jadeja’s batting stocks have been on an upward curve. In the last three years, he averages over 50 with the bat while his bowling has shown steady improvement as well. But in conditions where there was plenty of assistance for the fast bowlers, Sanjay Manjrekar feels Ravindra Jadeja’s inclusion was surprising, especially since the heavens had opened up and India still stuck to the XI they had announced on the eve of the start of the WTC final.
“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,” Manjrekar said on ESPNCricinfo.
“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.”
Ravindra Jadeja scored 15 off 53 balls before dismissed by Trent Boult. When it came to bowling, the all-rounder returned figures of 1/20 in 7.2 overs. Ravindra Jadeja, in the second innings, could only score 16 off 49 deliveries and only bowled eight of the 45 overs in the second innings, going wicketless and conceding 25 runs.
Sanjay Manjrekar Felt Playing A Specialist Batsman In Hanuma Vihari Would Have Been Handy
In the hindsight, Sanjay Manjrekar feels that playing an additional batsman might have helped India since the runs did not come from the middle-lower order.
“Had they had a specialist batsman in Hanuma Vihari for example, who had a pretty good defense, that would have been handy. Maybe 170 could have been 220, 225 or 230, who knows?” added Manjrekar.
“But I hope India doesn’t do what England have historically done, pick somebody because there is another strength that they have and that strength might just come to good use, but very rarely it does when it’s a pressure game.”
The 27-year-old Hanuma Vihari has scored 624 runs in 12 Tests for India at an average of around 32. He has hit a hundred and four half-centuries. Hanuma Vihari’s last India outing was in the Sydney Test against Australia, where his epic four-hour vigil (23 not out), with a torn hamstring alongside Ravichandran Ashwin, saved the game for the visiting team.
Another batting and bowling option was the two-Test old Shardul Thakur who was mighty impressive in the only longest format game he played in the away series against Australia in 2020/21, picking up seven wickets and a half-century in Brisbane. But he wasn’t even in the 15 man squad decided before the WTC final.