Sanjay Manjrekar Slams Rohit Sharma For Making Bizarre Decision In Pune, Says, 'He Needs To Come Out Of T20 Thinking'

Ind vs NZ, 2nd Test: Ex-India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar has given serious advice to Indian skipper Rohit Sharma and reckoned that he should step out of T20 thinking after losing the home Test series to New Zealand. It should be noted here that New Zealand hammered India by 113 runs in just three days in Pune and suffered their first home Test series defeat since 2012.

After losing this series, Manjrekar slammed the team management's decision to send Washington Sundar before Sarfaraz Khan during the second innings to balance the left-hand and right-hand combination in the middle. He described this decision as bizarre and revealed that Rohit should step out of T20 thinking for creating such combinations.

"The move to have Sarfaraz Khan bat down the order and send Washington Sundar above him because he is a left-hander, that kind of thing shouldn't happen. It's just bizarre. That's one thing that Rohit Sharma needs to be careful of...the T20 thinking of matchups left-hand-right-hand combinations. I think he should just go by the overall quality and ability of players," Manjrekar was quoted as saying on ESPNCricinfo.

While chasing a mammoth target of 359 runs during the second innings, the Rohit Sharma-led side was aiming to balance the right-hand-left-hand combination in the middle as Rishabh Pant came before Sarfaraz Khan during both innings. Pant was dismissed for a duck as he was run out due to a mix-up with Virat Kohli and that's why the team management decided to send Washington Sundar before Sarfaraz Khan as a No.6 batter.

Mitchell Santner ran through Indian batting

Sundar had a forgetful outing with the bat, getting out after scoring just 21 runs, whereas Sarfaraz was dismissed after scoring just nine runs off 15 balls. Besides Yashasvi Jaiswal (77), none of the other batters could score more than 50 runs, and the hosts were skittled out for just 245 runs during the fourth innings on the third day.

Mitchell Santner was one of the chief architects of New Zealand, as he took 13 wickets in the second test match and helped his team script history by winning their first test series in India. As the race for the WTC final has intensified, both the teams will face each other for the third and the last Test match, which will be held at the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai from Friday, November 1.