Sanjay Manjrekar shares examples of all-time great bowlers; picks Shane Warne with caveat

Manjrekar courted controversy by saying R Ashwin was not an all-time great.

Sanjay Manjrekar attracts a lot of controversy and most of the time his opinions fetch strong responses on social media. Earlier it was due to his ‘bits and pieces cricketer’ remark on Ravindra Jadeja and then an on-air spat with Harsha Bhogle during a match. 

This time, however, Manjrekar found himself in trouble after he mentioned that he doesn’t feel Indian off-spinner R Ashwin qualifies for the all-time great’s category in world cricket.

His reasoning for it was Ashwin not having a single five-wicket haul in the SENA countries (South Africa, England, New Zealand, and Australia).

"Respectfully disagree with Mr Manjrekar and say R Ashwin is a legend," says Abhinav Mukund

However, he received severe backlash for the same not only from fellow cricket expert and Australia batting legend Ian Chappell, who cited West Indies pace bowling legend, Joe Garner, as an example, who is considered an all-time great despite not having overall best performances everywhere in the world.

Even Twitterverse was not happy with Manjrekar putting down a cricketer from his own country.

Manjrekar tried to defend his stance and said that in his opinion the likes of Virat Kohli, Sachin Tendulkar, Sir Garry Sobers, and Sir Don Bradman are all-time greats and Ashwin is not quite there.

Now Manjrekar has shared a list of bowlers he considers all-time greats and named the likes of Sir Richard Hadlee, late Malcolm Marshall, Wasim Akram, and Shane Warne.

Twitterati react after Sanjay Manjrekar refuses to give "all-time great" tag to R Ashwin

However, he had a caveat with Shane Warne, saying that he didn’t have a great record against India, but had an impact everywhere else, and pointed out that Warne picked 8 five-wickets hauls in England.