There is no denying the fact that Sanjay Manjrekar is one of those former cricketers who like to attract controversy by making bold statements which are contrary to the opinion of majority of the Indian cricket lovers. Many times he has been quite critical of Indian cricketer Ravindra Jadeja and has been trolled by netizens in a merciless manner for the same; in fact in one instance, the Gujarat cricketer got so annoyed that he also slammed Manjrekar.
Recently, Sanjay Manjrekar was again on the target list of the Indian cricket lovers after he made the statement that in his opinion, Ravichandran Ashwin doesn’t deserve to be in the list of “all-time greats” as of now.
Now if we talk about Ravichandran Ashwin, he is undoubtedly one of the finest off-spinners of the present times and he is also the leading wicket taking spinner of the last decade. Ravichandran Ashwin made his debut in 2011 at the international level and since then, he has played 78 test matches, 111 ODIs and 46 T20Is in which he has taken 409, 150 and 52 wickets, respectively. The total number of wickets that he has taken since 2011 is 611 which is the highest by any bowler; England’s James Anderson comes second as he has taken 559 wickets in the same time period.
R Ashwin has also been adjudged as the Player of the Series in the test matches which is also a record. Not just this, he has also contributed in a decent manner with the bat too as he has 5 international test centuries and 11 test fifties to his name. However, Sanjay Manjrekar feels that all this is not enough for the 34 years old Tamil Nadu cricketer to get a place in the list of all-time greats.
In order to clarify his stance, Sanjay Manjrekar talked about the performance of Ashwin in SENA (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia) countries where the off-spinner hasn’t taken a fifer yet. While Sanjay Manjrekar is of the opinion that Ravindra Jadeja has performed at par with Ashwin in overseas conditions, he also praises Axar Patel for taking more wickets than Ashwin in the test series played against England at home.
Manjrekar made a tweet recently in which he explained his concept of all-time great. He wrote,
“‘All- time great’ is the highest praise & acknowledgement given to a cricketer. Cricketers like Don Bradman, Sobers, Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Virat etc. are all time greats in my book. With due respect, Ashwin not quite there as an all-time great yet. 🙏
#AllTimeGreatExplained😉”
‘All- time great’ is the highest praise & acknowledgement given to a cricketer. Cricketers like Don Bradman, Sobers, Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Virat etc are all time greats in my book. With due respect, Ashwin not quite there as an all-time great yet. 🙏#AllTimeGreatExplained😉
— Sanjay Manjrekar (@sanjaymanjrekar) June 6, 2021
Do you agree with what Sanjay Manjrekar opines about Ravichandran Ashwin? Let us know your views in this regard.
