I observed Jadeja in both innings. Manjrekar yells at Rohit Sharma's "senseless" strategy against the Australians, "You can't be doing that!"

For the first time in the series, Australia has positioned themselves as the clear favourites going into the penultimate and final innings of a game. At the end of Day 2 of the third Test in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series, Australia had reduced India to just 163 runs thanks to Nathan Lyon’s record eight-wicket haul, setting the Steve Smith-led team a target of 76 runs to win the match in Indore’s Holkar Stadium. Veteran cricketers criticised India’s captain Rohit Sharma’s strategy amid the team’s collapse in the second innings. One of them was former Indian batter Sanjay Manjrekar, who questioned the reasoning behind Ravindra Jadeja’s batting position.

Shreyas Iyer bats at No. 5 in the batting order, following Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli. Iyer, however, batted at No. 6 in both of Indore’s innings, with all-arounder Jadeja assigned to bat at No. 5. The left-handed batter, who bravely scored 70 in the first Test, has been in outstanding form with the bat.

- Advertisement -

Also Read: ‘Can’t believe a player of Virat Kohli’s calibre…’: Mark Waugh’s startling reaction to the dismissal of the former India captain (sportsdigest.in)

Jadeja was positioned ahead of Iyer, but this strategy was unsuccessful as Iyer came back with scores of 4 and 7. Iyer, on the other hand, scored 26 off of 27 balls after being dismissed for a duck in the first innings.

- Advertisement -

Manjrekar expressed his outrage at Rohit’s choice to bat Jadeja ahead of Iyer to Star Sports at the conclusion of Day 2 of play, calling it’senseless.

“I was just let down by Jadeja’s victory over Shreyas Iyer in the previous and current innings. That cannot be what you are doing for the left-right combination. Even though he bats with his right hand, you have a good batter. Jadeja, a left-hander, also entered the game… When you have two or three left-arm spinners, as Bangladesh once did, I can understand. Here, two excellent off-spinners are bowling. I could not understand it. Iyer has excellent spinner feel, so you want him to be first in the lineup. And he demonstrated to his class, “said he.

Manjrekar praised Steve Smith for his plan to take on spin-specialist Iyer after Mitchell Starc struck out the Indian batter.

- Advertisement -

“Steve Smith of Australia showed great leadership in the way he included Starc in the attack. Iyer is so good against spin, let’s try him against pace, they realised “said he.