“I do not have a problem with Jadeja; I have a problem with his kind of cricketers in white-ball cricket”: Sanjay Manjrekar
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|| India Correspondent ||
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24 Mar 25
Former India cricketer turned commentator Sanjay Manjrekar didn’t have a good 2019. At first, he faced backlash when he criticised Indian cricketer Ravindra Jadeja with his 'bits and pieces' comment. Later, he involved in an on-air spat with Harsha Bhogle which led him dropped from BCCI's commentary team later that year as well.
However, he is back in the commentary box now and Manjrekar has said that it's not the first time that he has faced this.
"Not many people know that I have been removed twice before as well. It was for something that I had tweeted. It is not easy, of course, but in many ways, I have become thick-skinned about such things," he said to The Hindu."I will hold myself responsible for, in all my twenty years of commentary, is the Harsha Bhogle incident, where I allowed him to get under my skin and said something that was not in good taste."
Meanwhile, he also opened up about his comment on Ravindra Jadeja. He said that he has a problem with players like him.
"I do not have a problem with Jadeja; I have a problem with his kind of cricketers in white-ball cricket. Even Hardik Pandya will not be in my team. They add illusionary value to the team. Of course, I have always rated Jadeja highly in the Test format," he again shared.
"When you play cricket, you know what a good year is because you have statistics to endorse that. But commentary is not like that; it is about how your analysis is or how your predictions fare. Last year, the problem was that the moment I said something would happen, the opposite of that would take place. I equate that with having a bad run. However, my thought process has been the same ever since I started out as a commentator," he concluded.
Team India have been playing a full-fledged series against Australia and they have already lost the first ODI by 66 runs.
