ENG vs IND 2025: Sanjay Manjrekar upset with Gill for dropping Sai Sudharsan after just one poor game

Former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar thought that dismissing Sai Sudharsan after just one Test had robbed him of a lot of confidence in his batting, which was evident in how he played in the early stages of the present Test match between England and India in Manchester. He cited Sudharsan’s tentativeness when dealing with deliveries outside the off stump as an evidence of the same.

The cricketer-turned-commentator went on to say that the youngster’s mindset heading into his second Test match was more concerned with survival than scoring runs. He believes that such attitude sprang solely from his fear of failure after being sidelined following a terrible debut performance at Headingley.

“Just going to focus on Sai Sudharsan here, it’s a story in itself. Now he’s come into bat, making a comeback into the playing XI, but I can detect some jitters in his hitting. He came with the preconceived notion that he’d leave everything outside off, which isn’t necessarily a negative thing, but there were a couple of really over-pitched deliveries and some pretty close to the stumps that he left alone,” Manjrekar said on JioHotstar live.

Sudharsan is more apprehensive today than when he debuted: Sanjay Manjrekar

The former India and Mumbai batsman said Sudharsan appeared significantly more agitated when batting in the present match than he did in the first Test.

“And I believe that when dealing with a young kid, you must be cognisant of these issues. They come with a precarious sense of assurance. Dropping just one Test match would have harmed his confidence considerably. He’s come back into this Test looking very apprehensive, much more so than he did in his debut Test, I believe,” Manjrekar observed.

Sudharsan came out to bat in the 31st over, following KL Rahul’s dismissal. Despite his initial indecision, he went on to score his first half-century and was removed for 61 off 151 in the day’s final session. When the umpires called Stumps on Day 1, India’s scorecard read 264 for the loss of four wickets after only 83 overs. The Tamil Nadu native has been India’s leading scorer thus far.