Sanjay Manjrekar turned 60 recently. After his cricket career, he became a successful commentator and earned good money in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Though he was good in domestic cricket, his international career wasn’t that impressive.
Manjrekar was important for the Indian team at times. For example, he scored a century in a Test match in Harare. He batted for about nine hours and helped the team draw the match. This was when big players like Sachin Tendulkar and Mohammad Azharuddin didn’t do well.
Manjrekar wrote in his autobiography ‘Imperfect’ released in 2018 that he felt his time was up. He spoke about his cricket career and why he retired early.
In his book, Sanjay Manjrekar recalled that people had high hopes for Rahul Dravid during Team India’s 1996 tour of England. But Sourav Ganguly came first. Manjrekar praised Dravid saying he seemed perfect for the Indian team. When I saw him bat, I felt my time was over, he wrote. Manjrekar retired when he was 32.
People liked Manjrekar’s skills and Sachin Tendulkar called him ‘Mr. Different’. Some said his technique was like Sunil Gavaskar’s. Manjrekar played 111 international matches and was very technical.
In the 1992 Harare Test, Zimbabwe scored 456 in the first innings. The Indian team led by Azharuddin had a bad start, losing players like Ravi Shastri, Sachin Tendulkar and Azharuddin early. At 101 for 5, the Indian team was in trouble. But Manjrekar batted for about nine hours and scored a hard-fought century and helped the team reach over 300.
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The match was drawn.Manjrekar played 37 Tests, scoring 2043 runs with an average of 37. 4 centuries and 7 half centuries. His highest Test score was 218. In 74 ODIs, he scored 1994 runs with an average of 33. 1 century and 15 half centuries. He also scored over 10,000 runs in first class cricket, 10,252 runs in 147 matches with an average of 55. 31 centuries and 46 half centuries.
