Sanjay Manjrekar Opines On The Virat Kohli-Ravi Shastri Era, Rohit Sharma As India's Next Test Captain

Former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar has broken his silence on the Virat Kohli-Ravi Shastri era of Indian cricket and the way forward for India in test cricket. Virat Kohli stepped down as India’s Test captain after he gave up on the T20I captaincy and was asked to step down as India’s ODI captain.

Sanjay Manjrekar further said that Indian cricket is yet to get over the shock of Kohli’s sacking as ODI captain as it prepares to look forward to the future. Talking to News 18, he spoke on a variety of issues pertaining to Indian cricket starting with the Shastri-Kohli era.

“For Virat, it’s important that he has people who support him. He knew Dravid had to be convinced, he wasn’t going to be like Shastri. And the BCCI regime too, where captaincy was taken away from him, showed that he wasn’t going to have unconditional support, which he seemed to have earlier” said Manjrekar when asked about the ideal reason behind Kohli giving up as Test captain.

Manjrekar further said that Ravi Shastri 2.0 does not make sensible comments and his recent comments have an agenda behind him. His comments were based on Shastri’s vision that Kohli might have been the leader of the Indian Test team for a couple more years.

I Don’t Understand Ravi Shastri 2-0: Sanjay Manjrekar

“I was a huge admirer of Ravi Shastri. I played under him, he gave players support, a great fighter, senior. This Shastri 2.0 I don’t understand. What he says in public is expected, I don’t react to it. I don’t want to be disrespectful. He doesn’t make very intelligent comments, you can see the agenda behind it. It’s not an accurate cricketing observation,” he said.

Sanjay Manjrekar concluded by keeping his stance on Rohit Sharma‘s future as India’s Test captain. Rohit is already the white-ball skipper of the team and is seen as the next best option to lead India in Tests given the poor form of Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara.

“Let’s not look too far ahead. Let’s look at one year; there’s no comfortable choice India has. All the other choices have a lot of issues around. A couple of Test matches in one year. There’s got to be a lot of T20 cricket and ODIs. So take one year at a time and appoint somebody who is most deserving, and if there is some issue then you start looking at another leader. Let’s not pre-empt, because I don’t think there are other exciting options at the moment” concluded Manjrekar.

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