Sanjay Manjrekar replies to his 2012 tweet when he claimed that Virat Kohli ‘did not belong’ in Test cricket

December 29, 2019

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Its been 23 years since Sanjay Manjrekar made headlines as a cricketer. Since his retirement in 1996, the commentator has always been a subject of controversy, and earning him slack around the Indian cricketing fandom. In 2012, the commentator made a controversial tweet on Virat Kohli, the newbie who was still just a year onto the Test squad of Team India. However, 7 years have gone, and Manjrekar’s stance has still not changed.

Kohli made his test debut in June 2011 against West Indies. On January 2012, Manjrekar made a tweet on the young Delhite’s future in the format, that was detrimental enough for the player, and Manjrekar was in the dock for his comment.

The future captain of India was selected for India’s tour of Australia, where he washaving trouble to express his talent. The occasional wicket keeper stated that Kohli did not belong to the team, and he would prefer Rohit Sharma to replace VVS Laxman in the squad.

Manjrekar tweeted: “I would still drop VVS & get rohit in for next test.Makes long term sense. give virat 1 more test..just to be sure he does not belong here.”

However, the whole cricketing fandom knows how wrong Manjrekar was wrong in his prediction. Just after his tweet, Kohli produced back to back mouth watering test innings of 44 and 75 runs in the series. Cut back to the present, and Captain Kohli is ranked no. in ICC’s test batsmen ranking of 2019 with a rating of 928.

But did that change Manjrekar’s opinion? Well, It didn’t. The 54 year old has made another tweet yesterday, saying that he still stands by his 7 year old comment oh Kohli, reminding the social media audience about how the fans agreed to his statement on the player in the past.

In his recent tweet Manjrekar wrote: “Very proud of that tweet. In his 1st year in Tests, after scores of 11,0,23,9 in Aus, I remember, fans/media saying Virat does not belong here & had his neck on the chopping block for the next Test. I said give him 1 more Test to be sure. Glad Dhoni & me were on the same page.”

Although, Manjrekar’s comments were not enough to curb the young Kohli’s confidence on the 22 yards. Kohli has earned an astounding 269 caps for the Men in Blue in test cricket, scoring over 7000 runs with a batting average of 54.97.