Former India cricketer and commentator Sanjay Manjrekar commented on India’s disastrous T20I series defeat to Ireland and England. However, the poor result brought Shreyas Iyer and head coach Gautam Gambhir under the scanner as well. However, Manjrekar said that removing either the captain or the coach would be the “easy” option; instead, he asked the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to inspect the biggest reasons behind this result.
“The easiest thing to do for India would be to sack Gautam Gambhir, sack the captain, sack some of the players who didn’t perform well in Ireland and England. That would be the easy thing to do,” Manjrekar said in a video on his Instagram page. “The right thing to do would be to identify the main reason for India’s setback. And the main reason is that these T20 matches were played in Ireland and England, in overseas conditions.”
“Our batters and our team were poorly prepared for these conditions. Why? Because the selectors actually picked all these players based on their IPL performances,” he shared.
Sanjay Manjrekar also said that the IPL’s extreme batting-friendly conditions need to be done away with.
“The IPL puts on a very heavy makeup on Indian batters, all batters. The IPL batting conditions are the easiest I’ve ever seen in my life. And that is why it flatters to deceive. And that is why you see so many batters at the top of the order doing the crazy things that they do,” he stated.
“So you don’t really know which player will do well when there is something there for the bowlers. And it’s not as easy as batting on a marble sheet as it’s in the IPL. And that is where the selectors need to be smart and pick people like Shubham Gill, who will succeed in Ireland, England, everywhere as a T20 batter,” Manjrekar again said.
“Go deeper and actually sack those guys who’ve been advising the BCCI that (batting-friendly conditions) to make IPL more popular and more commercially viable,” he concluded.
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