India’s veteran cricketers Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were under a lot of pressure after their poor returns in the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25. Both the players are closely watched from different sides of the cricketing world.
Former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar spoke about these two senior players of the team and mentioned that they are losing their team down with their performances. He also blamed the performances of these two players for India’s poor performance in the Test series against Australia.
Manjrekar spoke about India’s famous “culture of hero worship” and claimed it was having a negative impact on the team. He blamed this culture as the main reason behind India’s decline in the past few months.
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Sanjay Manjrekar blames Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli for “dragging the team down”
While writing for his column in Hindustan Times, Sanjay Manjrekar blamed India’s culture of hero worship as the main reason behind the team’s performance in Tests in the last two series. He believes that Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are now dragging the team down with their performances.
He claimed that this is the culture in Indian cricket since forever and even recalled a time when the same thing happened when players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid were in the mix.
“One of the most important reasons for this is the icon culture we have in India and the hero worship of certain players. Be it 2011-12 or now, it is the same scenario being played out,” Manjrekar wrote in his column.
“Icon players who have prominently done the opposite of what they have done their entire careers, dragging the team down with their diminished performance. When it comes to big players, we as a country are simply unable to remain rational,” he added.
A former Indian cricketer explains how the logic of cricket disappears when it comes to the careers of iconic players. According to him, even the selectors are afraid of kicking such players out of the team.
“Cricketing logic goes out the window and then the selectors hope the player will go on his own so they don’t look like the villains who brutally ended the career of a great loved by millions of fans. They are just afraid of the reaction.”
Sanjay Manjrekar asks Ajit Agarkar to take the final decision
Sanjay Manjrekar further asked the Ajit Agarkar-led selection committee to take tough decisions and questioned Rohit Sharma’s ability to survive in international cricket going forward.
“Does Rohit Sharma still have the potential to redeem himself for all his recent failures? I’d like to think the current selection committee has a pretty good idea of that,” he asserted.
“But now comes the hard part — can the board really make a hard decision based on its observations? So that Mr. Ajit Agarkar can take a clean cricketing decision, no matter who the player is, we have to make it easy for him,” he explained.
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli’s recent numbers
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have been going through a poor run of form with the bat since India won the T20 World Cup 2024 in June 2024. Both players retired from T20Is after India’s title win. The men in blue didn’t play many ODIs because there was a lot of Test cricket being played.
India played five home Tests against Bangladesh and New Zealand in which both Rohit and Kohli failed. Rohit Sharma scored 133 runs at an average of 13.30 while Virat Kohli scored 192 runs at an average of 21.33.
Their poor form continued in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as both were dominated by Australia’s world-class bowling attack. Rohit has scored 31 runs in three Tests at an average of 6.20, while Virat Kohli has fared slightly better with 190 runs at an average of 23.75, but is still below par.
