Former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar has advised the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) against sacking head coach Gautam Gambhir or seven-matches-old captain Shreyas Iyer in response to the unprecedented double series whitewash against Ireland and England. He said that even if that’s the ‘easiest’ thing to do, the problem lies much deeper, especially in how the Indian Premier League (IPL) is run.
Gambhir and Shreyas are under extreme pressure because of how the tour unfolded. India came to the UK as back-to-back World Champions of T20 but suffered a first-ever T20 defeat to Ireland, followed by a first whitewash, and then looked clueless against England. The unsettled top-order underperformed, while the middle-order looked extremely
troubled against spinners, despite their being no drastic help for bowlers.
“The easiest thing to do for India would be to sack Gautam Gambhir, sack the captain, and sack some of the players who didn’t perform well in Ireland and England,” Manjrekar said on his Instagram handle. “That would be the easy thing to do. The right thing to do would be to identify the main reason for the setback that India had. And the main reason is where these T20 matches were played — Ireland and England, overseas conditions. And 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 added.
Manjrekar argued that IPL batting conditions are the easiest he’s seen, making every Indian batter look better than they are and masking who can truly perform when bowlers have assistance. He said the BCCI should instead look at sacking the people behind making the IPL more batting-friendly.
“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 Shubhun Gill who will succeed in Ireland, England, everywhere as a T20 batter,” he added. “The simple thing would be to look at the team, but no, go deeper and actually sack those guys who have been advising the BCCI that to make the IPL more popular and commercially viable, let’s have more fours and sixes, let’s have 200-plus scores, because that is how viewership grows. It could be true, but then this happens as well,” he said.
India will now play a three-ODI series against England, starting Tuesday.
