Former Indian cricketer, Vinay Kumar, has hit back at fellow cricketer-turned-commentator, Sanjay Manjrekar for his barb during commentary on Day 3 of the first Test match between India and Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as Miami’s city had turned warm.
Manjrekar, during the commentary assigned to him, classified Kumar as a medium pacer and credited the Indian domestic format with grassy wickets for Kumar’s success. “But I think that is gone, but what it also did to middle-paced bowlers like the Vinay Kumars, with no offence to him, it awarded them an entry to topping wicket-taking charts because all they had to do was put the ball in the right area at 120 kmph during the course of the game, as there was so much grass on the wickets,” Manjrekar said on air, as quoted by Hindustan Times.
Highly reputed in domestic and international formats, Kumar did not at all take kindly to those comments by Manjrekar and slammed it back with a fiery post on his official X account.
“Sanjay Bhai with all the respect, your speed gun needs an urgent service. 120 KMPH? Really? With the grace of God I am proud of my achievements and I am content and satisfied and happy with life,” he wrote.
“Medium pacer like Vinay Kumar had worked hard to become the 1st Indian fast bowler to take 100 IPL wickets and played also for the country in all the formats. I take pride in my bowling. Best wishes and regards anyways,” he added.
Kumar represented India in all three formats during his playing days. He took 1, 38, and 10 wickets in Test, ODIs, and T20s, respectively. In terms of domestic, he has picked up 504 wickets in the first-class format, 225 in List-A cricket, and 194 T20s as well.
Recently, Manjrekar was slammed in the public show for his remarks on veteran Indian fast bowler Mohammed Shami. He has given a statement that Shami would not have such a huge price tag against him, owing to his recent injury problems. This comment was not taken kindly by Shami.
Shami will indeed now move to Sunrisers Hyderabad as the franchise has made a successful bid of Rs 10 Crore for Shami’s services, which is a decent price tag considering that he is back to bowling full throttle again.
