Bipin Dani
Sanjay Manjrekar’s recent remark that Ashwin’s not an all-time great cricketer brought interesting responses from Ashwin and others
Team India’s top off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin claimed his heart is ‘hurt’ in a sarcastic response to TV commentator Sanjay Manjrekar’s recent remark.
Manjrekar had earlier said that he didn’t consider the 34-year-old off-spinner an all-time great bowler.
“When people start talking about him as being one of the all-time greats of the game, I have a few problems,” Manjrekar said.
“One basic problem I have with Ashwin is that when you look at South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia (SENA) countries, Ashwin doesn’t have a single five-wicket haul there.”
Manjrekar then also defined ‘all- time great’ as per his understanding. “‘All-time great’ is the highest praise & acknowledgement given to a cricketer. Cricketers like Don Bradman, Sobers, Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Virat etc are all time greats in my book. With due respect, Ashwin not quite there as an all-time great yet (sic),” he’d tweeted.
The tweet came after Manjrekar spoke in an interview, where he explained his thoughts further.
“Another thing when talking about him running through sides on Indian pitches suited to his kind of bowling is that in the last four years Jadeja has matched his wicket-taking abilities.”
R. Ashwin—the highest Test wicket-taker among the current active international Test cricket players—responded to the comment with a hilarious meme on his Twitter page.
Ashwin chose to post a still from the 2005-super hit Tamil movie Anniyan, in which the lead character (played by actor Vikram) tells his friend (played by the deceased actor Vivek), ‘Apdi solladha da Chaari, manasellam valikirdhu’ (‘Don’t say that, Chaari, my heart hurts).
The post, oozing sarcasm, sat well with a part of Ashwin’s Twitter bio, which reads ‘Sarcasm and optimism my forte’.
As the current ‘all-time great’ spat did its rounds on the Internet, Ashwin’s childhood coach and once Indian team’s administrative manager, Sunil Subramanium, told us that to him, Ashwin is a jewel.
“Manjrekar’s comments simply don’t need a reply as I believe neither the player nor the team care about what’s being said,” Subramanium told us.
