Team India endured a winless streak in their recent bilateral T20I tours of Ireland and England. Under the captaincy of Shreyas Iyer, the reigning T20 world champions lost to Ireland 2-0 and to England 4-0.
The string of poor performances has piled pressure on head coach Gautam Gambhir and Shreyas, who replaced T20 World Cup-winning skipper Suryakumar Yadav last month.
Amid the severe scrutiny, former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar has extended support to the team management and players, citing that the root cause of the debacle is the flat IPL conditions, where every batter makes merry.
Manjrekar also argued that IPL surfaces expose batters in overseas conditions and urged the BCCI to prepare more sporting tracks, warning the next T20 World Cup will be held in Australia.
“The easiest thing to do for India would be to sack Gautam Gambhir, sack the captain, sack some of the players who didn't perform well in Ireland and England. That would be the easy thing to do. The right thing to do would be to identify the main reason for India's setback. And the main reason is that these T20 matches were played in Ireland and England, in 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,” Manjrekar said in a video shared on Instagram.
“And here's a problem. When you do that, what you've seen in the last four, five years, something that you've seen as well is the IPL puts on a very heavy makeup on Indian batters, all batters. They've made it the easiest batting condition. The IPL batting conditions are the easiest I've ever seen in my life. And that is why it flatters to be seen. And that is why you see so many batters at the top of the order, you know, doing the crazy things that they do,” he added.
Not the one to mince his words, Manjrekar stated that the blame lies with the BCCI advisers who engineered ultra-flat, batting-friendly pitches to boost television viewership and commercial profits.
“So you don't really know which player will do well when there is something there for the bowlers. And 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 Shubman Gill, who will succeed in Ireland, England, everywhere as a T20 batter,” said Manjrekar.
“So yes, as I said, simple thing would be to look at the team, but no, go deeper and actually sack those guys who've been advising the BCCI that to make IPL more popular and more commercially viable, let's have more 460, let's have 200 plus score, because that is how viewership goes, could be true, but then this happens as well. So there you are,” he remarked.
