During his long first-class career, Sanjay Manjrekar always played with a straight bat. He was labelled something of a perfectionist with an excellent defensive technique – some said he was obsessed with defence – and brought his famed batting skills and the strength of his mind to the fore with a terrific tour of Pakistan in 1989, a tour that introduced the cricket world to Sachin Tendulkar.
Having warmed up with a century in Bridgetown and two terrific 40s in Kingston in the first half of the year in the Caribbean, the right-hander was near-impossible to dislodge from the batting crease in Pakistan. Against Imran Khan and Wasim Akram and Saleem Jaffer and Abdul Qadir and a fiery Waqar Younis in his first series, the Mangalore-born batter unleashed scores of 3, 113 n.o., 76, 83, 218, 72 and 4 as India under K Srikkanth drew the four-Test series 0-0.
Manjrekar was hailed as the next big thing in Indian cricket, a natural successor to the recently retired Sunil Gavaskar in taking the Bombay school of batsmanship forward, but he didn’t quite attain the dizzy heights predicted. A solitary century and six fifties in his last 28 Tests meant he bowed out with an average of 37.14 from 37 games, more than modest but far from eye-popping.
Post his playing days, the articulate Manjrekar became a commentator and an analyst, bringing the same straight bat to his talking and writing. He hasn’t always cared for political correctness, oftentimes to his own detriment, and has had a strong opinion, however edgy and unpopular that might be.
Sinned against, or sinner?
Several of his comments have riled India’s sensitive cricketers, many of whom feel they are above even scrutiny, leave alone criticism. But Manjrekar has also not refrained from making comments that someone as intelligent as him must surely be aware will raise hackles.
Among those who have taken offence at his proclamations are Ravindra Jadeja, the ace all-rounder who took exception to being termed a ‘bits-and-pieces cricketer’ on air during the 2019 50-over World Cup in England. The Saurashtra’s man repartee too transgressed into personal space, with a potshot at Manjrekar’s ‘verbal diarrhoea’ thrown in. To Manjrekar’s credit, when Jadeja almost masterminded a sensational semifinal win over New Zealand in the same tournament from a hopeless position, he mixed humour with couched apology when he told the ICC, “By bits and pieces, he just ripped me apart today. By bits and pieces of sheer brilliance, he proved me wrong on all fronts.”
The job of a cricket expert/analyst entails forceful opinions without worrying about the consequences so long as those opinions aren’t laced with personal attacks. Manjrekar has treaded the miniscule line dangerously but dextrously, but occasionally he does cross it, unapologetically. Because a sea of public opinion has steadily built against him, even nuanced observations elicit strong reactions, including from the player concerned about whom Manjrekar has commented.
Take the recent Mohammed Shami case, for instance. Ahead of the IPL auction, Manjrekar said on STAR Sports, “There will definitely be interest from teams, but given Shami’s injury history — and this recent one took a significant amount of time to recover — there’s always a concern about a potential breakdown during the season. If a franchise invests heavily and then loses him mid-season, their options become limited. This concern might lead to a drop in his price tag.”
Shami missed nearly one year of cricket after the final of the 50-over World Cup against Australia on November 19 last year, and had played just one Ranji Trophy game and a 20-over Mushtaq Ali Trophy fixture for Bengal in the ten days leading up to the Jeddah auction. Manjrekar was merely stating the obvious, one could argue, but it touched a raw nerve in Shami, who responded on social media with not a lot of grace. No prizes for guessing with whom public sympathy lay.
Manjrekar might not have meant malice when he spoke of how grass on Indian pitches in domestic cricket had impacted the sport, but he could have chosen his words more carefully. “What it did was medium pacers like Vinay Kumar, with no disrespect to him, were on the top of wicket-taking charts because they needed grass on the pitch and put the ball in the right areas at 120 kmph speed to take wickets.” he said on commentary during the first Australia-India Test in Perth. Vinay, the first Indian pacer to take 100 IPL wickets and who signed off with 504 first-class scalps, posted cutely on X in reply, “Sanjay bhai, with due respect, your speed gun requires urgent servicing.” Touche.
There’s nothing right or wrong about having an opinion and voicing it, but discretion is always, always, the better part of valour. Manjrekar is wise enough not to be told what not to do, but we can have an opinion too, right?
