Sanjay Manjrekar attacks Rohit Sharma for replacing KL Rahul as opener, exposes Indian cricket culture's issue

Launching a scathing attack on India’s cricketing culture, Sanjay Manjrekar has slammed the decision to make changes for underperforming captain Rohit Sharma at the cost of team balance for the ongoing Boxing Day Test against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

Manjrekar highlighted the growing trend of prioritizing iconic players’ return to form over maintaining a stable lineup, and he feels India's trend has been disrupting the team dynamics. The former Indian batter’s remarks came after Team India’s couple of changes backfired in the must-win fourth Test against Australia.

Sanjay Manjrekar calls out Rohit Sharma’s return as opener, urges India to prioritize performance over big names

Actually, Rohit Sharma returned to his usual opening position despite struggling in the middle order with just 19 runs from three innings in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25, where he missed the first Test against Australia in Perth.

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Since the Indian cricket team captain returned to his opening slot, KL Rahul, who had been the team's most consistent opener in the ongoing five-match Test series, was moved to number three, breaking up his successful partnership with Yashasvi Jaiswal for the crucial Boxing Day Test.

The batting order shuffle didn’t yield the result they expected, as Rohit was dismissed cheaply for 3 runs while KL Rahul could make only 24 runs against Australia in the ongoing fourth Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25 in Melbourne. Apart from these changes, India also played an additional spin all-rounder, Washington Sundar, for which they dropped Shubman Gill.

We make all kinds of adjustments to give opportunity for the iconic players: Sanjay Manjrekar

According to Wisden, Sanjay Manjrekar said during the commentary: “An issue that is deeply connected with the Indian cricket culture is that all those iconic players in India, struggling for runs, and then we go out of the way to make sure that he comes back into form.

"We make all kinds of adjustments to give the best kind of platform or opportunity for the iconic players. A situation where KL Rahul has been the best opener for both sides, the most consistent batter for India—he is being displaced from his position, batting at No. 3, so that Rohit Sharma is given an opportunity to get into form.”

Meanwhile, Sanjay Manjrekar questioned the logic behind replacing KL Rahul with Rohit Sharma at the top order while pointing out that the Karnataka batter had been thriving at the opening slot in Australia and even he had formed a record partnership with Yashasvi Jaiswal in the Perth Test.

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Sanjay Manjrekar says India risked team performance for Rohit Sharma’s ego

The cricket pundit said that the Indian team management’s attempts to help struggling players like Rohit Sharma get back into form are understandable, but they should not have risked the team's performance, especially in such a high-stakes game. He also argued that the best interests of the team should have come first, instead of valuing the ego of big names.

Manjrekar signed off by saying, “KL Rahul has been so good at that position. It's not easy opening in Australia. Jaiswal and KL Rahul had a record partnership for India in Australia, but India was quite happy to break that partnership to allow a big-name player to succeed. In Australia, when you have found an opener who has looked the part, pushing him down to number 3 to get a woefully out-of-form big-name player to open, I thought was just a poor call.”