Former Indian player turned veteran commentator Sanjay Manjrekar believes the management was wrong to seat Sai Sudharsan out after one Test in the ongoing series against England. The youngster starred with the bat for India on the opening day of the fourth Test at Manchester, scoring a 151-ball 61 as well. He replaced Karun Nair at no. 3 as well.
Talking about Sai after Day 1 of the fourth Test on ESPN Cricinfo, Manjrekar said: “He must have been heartbroken to be dropped after the first Test. I thought India almost played around with a young career because it could have gone completely south. The way he started out, we could see a bit of nervousness. He showed some promise in the second innings of the first Test, so that was India playing with fire with a young man’s career. Fortunately, he showed a big heart, didn’t get a hundred, but most people would be saying, ‘Yes, we expected that from Sai Sudharsan’.”
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However, Sanjay Manjrekar also compared Sai Sudharsan’s Test selection based on a dominant IPL season with speedster Jasprit Bumrah’s path to the Indian Test team as well. He was the highest run-scorer in IPL 2025 with 759 runs at an average of 54.21 and a strike rate of 156.17 in 15 outings as well.
“It was the same if you cast your mind back to Jasprit Bumrah. It’s not that all of us watching him in first-class cricket saw his great numbers and felt this is a guy who will do well in Test cricket. But, just watching him play white-ball cricket, you look at a few things – smarts, the Test match line for a bowler. Similarly, as a batter, we look at his temperament,” Sanjay Manjrekar stated.
“If Sai Sudharsan had got 30s and 40s, batting at the top of the order, in IPL cricket, I don’t think all of us would have been as excited. But, whenever he got in, he played the long innings and got the big runs. He has a very simple and organized technique, so it was going to make his life at the Test level easier because the basic game is tailor-made for the format,” Sanjay Manjrekar concluded.
