Team India have qualified for the semi-finals after a surprisingly unpredictable victory against Bangladesh. While this may be cause for cheer, the Indian cricket fan is known to be highly demanding of their team, and, if the fans are demanding, the commentators are sometimes even more so.
Sanjay Manjrekar, former cricketer and now-commentator, sparked criticism after a series of tweets criticizing Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Mohammed Shami and K.L. Rahul. Pointing out that Dhoni scored more runs off spin balls during the warm-up matches, he said the player and former India captain ‘does not put his wicket on the line as much during big games’.
This irked the fans. Some Twitter users responded calling it an unfair comparison for Dhoni, accusing Manjrekar's commentary of being biased..
More trolling followed by popular Twitter handles, which hoped Manjrekar would stopped commenting on matches.
A Twitter account calling itself the ‘MS Dhoni’s official fan club’, with over three lakh followers, tweeted calling for Manjrekar’s removal.
Manjerkar is not unused to angry comments. The day before his Dhoni tweet, he gave out a light-hearted take on the online trolling he receives on a regular basis, saying he sees ‘only love’ for him on Twitter.
ESPN commentator Raunak Kapoor had earlier come to Manjrekar’s defence.
Past controversies
The commentator has had controversial moments before. In 2017, when he was in the commentary box during IPL 10, he criticized the West Indies and then Mumbai Indians batsman Kieron Pollard after a match between Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Fans misheard him as saying “Pollard has no brains” and erupted. Many media outlets reported that he had called the Windies batsman “brainless”, sparking fury online and offline.
Pollard himself responded with an emotional tweet.
Manjrekar later clarified that he was saying that “Pollard has no range” and that fans had misheard him.
Pollard later deleted one of his tweets directed at Manjrekar.
He had another spat in 2015, after a Twitter exchange between him and Sania Mirza went viral. It started when Sania tweeted about retaining her place as the “number 1 player in d world” for 80 weeks.
While many congratulated her, Manjrekar did so but corrected her to add that she was the number 1 ‘doubles’ players.
Since Sania had not played singles matches since 2013, she replied saying it was a matter of common sense.
This sparked a brief but tense exchange between the two.