Former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar was critical of Rohit Sharma’s dismissal in the first innings of the ongoing second Test match against New Zealand. Rohit Sharma returned to the pavilion without scoring in the match and was bowled by Tim Southee who bowled the batter with an outswing delivery and was failed to defend the ball. Interestingly, this makes it a total of 14 times Rohit has fallen prey to Southee in his international career, the joint highest by any bowler along with Kagiso Rabada. While discussing the topic on ESPNcricinfo, Manjrekar evaluated the issues of Rohit and took a dig at the captain’s attitude in defia.
“The fifty that he scored in the second innings of the previous Test, I enjoyed that. He seemed promising, but in the first innings, even with a slight assistance in the pitch, the same flimsy technique, which we used to discuss in the early days of his international career,” Manjrekar spoke.
Manjrekar also expressed that Rohit suffers a little bit when the ball is hard and the pitch is aiding the bowlers.
“A reaction with the bat is when that will settle in and he would not step forward to take the run that he has to take. He is always doing that while batting and that takes you back to the time when he had that brilliant series in England and he was using the bat and not the pad to leave balls wide outside off stump. I believe they have figured out how to get under the skin of Rohit Sharma. If you see he was made to play that ball and in an attempt to play a ball that he had to play that movement he is always acting the bat down. He was in that case of the first Test match as well where there was DRS, and he was responding with the bat to the movement but there was no pad.”
His ability to handle aggression is also what makes him a little vulnerable whenever the pitch has a little bit in it and the ball is hard. Yes, the defense, more than anything, is a worry because this guy is temperamentally superb. He just needs to adjust his defense a bit more and that should be fine. I saw that happen in that second innings of the last test match,’ he added.
