Former India batsman, Sanjay Manjrekar\u2019s hopes of being reinstated as commentator for the upcoming IPL season have been dealt a blow. This is due to BCCI\u2019s refusal to his proposal regarding reinstating him on the panel of shortlisted commentators for IPL 2020.<\/p>\n
A report in the Mumbai Mirror states that the BCCI has approached the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, L Sivaramakrishnan, Murali Kartik, Harsha Bhogle and those from overseas through mail seeking their availability for the upcoming IPL. However, no such mail was sent to Manjrekar, all but closing the door on his return to commentary. The final call lies in the hands of BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah.<\/p>\n
Manjrekar had last Saturday written to the BCCI, requesting the board to reinstate him for commentary duties for the IPL 2020. Manjrekar, a renowned commentator since his retirement in 1996, was in March excluded from the BCCI\u2019s panel of commentators ahead of India\u2019s three ODI series against South Africa which got cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, with the IPL set for a September 19 start, Manjrekar wrote that he will \u2018stick to the guidelines laid out\u2019 by the BCCI.<\/p>\n
\u201cRespected members of the Apex Council, hope you all keeping well. You are already in receipt of the email I sent to explain my position as commentator,\u201d Manjrekar had written top the Apex Council members of the BCCI, a copy of which was leaked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the IPL dates announced, bcci.tv will pick its commentary panel soon. I will be happy to work as per the guidelines laid by you. After all, we are working on what is essentially your production. Last time may be there was not enough clarity on this issue. Thanks very much, Regards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manjrekar landed in hot waters for a couple of incidents last year. He created strong controversy by calling India all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja a \u201cbits-and-pieces\u201d player during the 2019 World Cup, to which the India allrounder made a scathing remark on Twitter comparing Manjrekar\u2019s commentary to verbal diarrhoea. Manjrekar had to later apologise for his remark after Jadeja\u2019s fighting half-century nearly took India home in the semi-final.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy bits \u2018n\u2019 pieces of sheer brilliance, he\u2019s ripped me apart on all fronts,\u201d he had said.<\/p>\n
Once the Jadeja controversy cooled down, Manjrekar got involved in an on-air spat with Harsha Bhogle during India\u2019s first ever Day\/Night Test against Bangladesh in October. With the pink ball posing questions about its visibility, Bhogle had suggested that they needed to do a proper post-mortem after the pink ball Test, asking the players whether there were problems regarding visibility. Responding to this, Manjrekar responded: \u201cOnly you need to ask, Harsha, not us, who have played a fair bit of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Days later, Manjrekar apologised for the remark while conceding that 2019 was one of his worst years as an analyst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 2020 season of IPL is due to kick off in the UAE from the 19th of September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":24236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[300,95],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket","tag-sanjay-manjrekar","tag-sourav-ganguly"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}