Sanjay Manjrekar sheds light on his relation with Sachin Tendulkar

Manjrekar named Imran Khan as his favorite captain.

Sachin Tendulkar was Sanjay Manjrekar's roommate as a 14-year-old at a tournament in Chennai | Getty

Ex India batsman Sanjay Manjrekar’s rapport with the legendary Sachin Tendulkar often becomes the talk of the town since the former had criticized the batting maestro on quite a few occasions for his batting approach.

Manjrekar, who turned into a commentator post-retirement in 1996, had taken a dig at Tendulkar for his circumspect batting style when the Master Blaster was going through ‘tennis elbow’ issues in 2005-06. Prior to the 2008 CB Series Final in Australia, Manjrekar had questioned Sachin’s place in the team as the batting legend aggregated a series of low scores. In the very next innings, Tendulkar silenced all his critics by slamming a match-winning 117* versus Australia.

Considering the past remarks, there were plenty of speculations whether the two Mumbaikars are in good terms with each other. Busting all sorts of myth, Manjrekar recently opened up about his current frosty relationship with Tendulkar who was his roommate as a 14-year-old at a tournament in Chennai.

"We bump into each other at grounds. He looks at me. I look at him. We are fine," Manjrekar was quoted by PTI as saying at the launch of his autobiography "Imperfect" on Wednesday (January 10).

Talking about his father (the late Vijay Manjrekar), Sanjay said he had no plans of including him in the biography but later felt that the senior Manjrekar had made a huge impact on him.

"I had no plan of including him in my book at first. But then I decided to include all those who had made an impact on me. The strongest emotion I felt when near him was fear which was common (between father and son) in those days," said Manjrekar through a unique manner of interviewing himself in a video.

"The way he (late Vijay Manjrekar) handled me had a lot to do about my success as a cricketer. I'm happy that both my children have nothing to do with cricket and I had allowed them to chart their own careers," said the cricketer-turned-commentator.

On being asked about the captain he was most impressed with, Manjrekar instantly named - Imran Khan.

"It's a no-brainer. I am a fan of Imran Khan. I would have loved to play under him. Among the Indians I like Mahendra Singh Dhoni. I also would have liked to play under (current captain) Virat Kohli. He's an in-your-face leader who hates losing games and gets very upset then," opined Sanjay.

The 52-year-old Sanjay also singled out former former England captains Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain as his favourite TV commentators, saying "they have raised the bar so much."

He concluded by elaborating the reason behind his book's title, "Imperfect".

"I realised quite late that trying to be perfect is impossible to achieve. I realised I was chasing a ghost or a mirage and that's the reason I have named it `Imperfect'," concluded Manjrekar.

 
 

By Salman Anjum - 11 Jan, 2018

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