Right after the official World Cup XI announcement by the ICC,  former cricketers have been naming their own squads. Sachin Tendulkar, Asish Nehra and few others have already named their playing XI and now Sanjay Manjrekar has his say on a WC XI.

On a special video to ESPNcricinfo, Manjrekar shared his views on World Cup XI. Just like others, he had no hesitation in naming openers in the form of Jason Roy and Rohit Sharma. Terming them as a destructive opening pair, he said that Roy”s absence played a crucial role in few of the games England lost. 

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A solid middle-order comprising the likes of Shakib – Al-Hasan, Indian skipper Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson added a flavour to his squad. He said that their consistency paved way for the victories for respective sides. His lower middle order included Alex Carey and Mitchell Santner.

While Carey scored around 375 runs down the order for Australia, he gave reasons behind including Santner. He stressed that Santner”s economy rate in the tournament proved to be one of the winning factors for the kiwis and that”s the primary reason behind naming him as a part of playing XI. 

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He chose to go with the aggressive pace trio of Jofra Archer, Mitchell Starc and Jasprit Bumrah just like others. What”s fascinating here is the addition of Shaheen Afridi to the side.

It is to be noted that Afridi”s role in giving breakthroughs was highly applauded by experts. At one point, when Pakistan was almost crashed out of World Cup, his spells in consecutive games boosted their chances. He chose Kane Williamson as the skipper for this side. 

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Though his squad was similar to few of the ones already announced, the exclusion of Ben Stokes is one of the point to be noted. Stokes was one of the chief architects in scripting the victory for the hosts and a lot of fans were seen commenting on the same in social media handles.

Sanjay Manjrekar XI:

Jason Roy, Rohit Sharma, Shakib Al Hasan, Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson(C), Alex Carey (WK), Mitchell Santner, Jofra Archer, Mitchell Starc, Shaheen Afridi, Jasprit Bumrah 

 

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