Former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar has opined that Steve Smith gave a captaincy masterclass against India at the Holkar Stadium in Indore. Australia bowled India out for 163 and chased down the target of 76 runs to win the third Test of the four-match Border-Gavaskar series by 9 wickets. Speaking to Star Sports, Manjrekar said he was disappointed to see Ravindra Jadeja come ahead of Shreyas Iyer.

Explaining the same, Sanjay Manjrekar said, “It has just disappointed me in the last and this innings as well that Jadeja came ahead of Shreyas Iyer. You can’t be doing that for left-right combination. You’ve got a proper batter, even if he is a right-hander.”

Former Indian cricketer went on to say that Iyer is a great player of spin and should be ahead of Jadeja in India’s batting order.

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Elaborating the same, Sanjay Manjrekar said, “And Jadeja coming in as a left-hander, I can understand when you have 2-3 left-arm spinners like Bangladesh used to have in the past. Here you have two quality off-spinners bowling. It did not make any sense to me. Iyer has a great feel for spinners so you want him ahead in the line-up. And he has shown his class.”

The former cricketer said Smith displayed great captaincy when he introduced Mitchell Starc to get the wicket of Iyer, when he was going after the spinners.

Sanjay Manjrekar explained, “Great captaincy too from Australia’s Steve Smith in the way he got Starc into the attack. They realized Iyer is so good against spin, let’s try him against pace.”

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Manjrekar also hailed Cheteshwar Pujara’s against-the-tide knock, saying this was one of his best innings. He said, “What a wonderful inning. He may not have got a hundred, he has got 19 Test hundreds, but this was one of his best innings that I have seen because of the difficulty of the conditions. The way he balanced attack and defense was wonderful to watch.”