ENG vs IND 2025: Sanjay Manjrekar unhappy with Gill for dropping Sai Sudharsan after just one poor game

Former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar felt dropping Sai Sudharsan after just one Test had wiped off quite a lot of his confidence from his batting, which reflected in how he was playing in the early part of the ongoing Test's innings between England and India at Manchester. He pointed out Sudharsan's tentative nature while dealing with deliveries outside the off stump as an indicator of the same.

The cricketer-turned-commentator further expressed that the youngster thought process was more to survive anyhow rather than trying to score runs coming into his second Test match. He feels that such thinking came purely from the fear of failure he had developed after being sidelined following a poor outing on debut at Headingley.

“Just going to focus on Sai Sudharsan here, it's a story in itself. Now he's come into bat, again, made a comeback into the playing XI, but I'm seeing some nerves here, the way he is batting. He's come with this pre-conceived mindset that he's going to leave everything outside off, which is not a bad thing to happen, but there were a couple of very over-pitched deliveries and some very close to the stumps that he left alone,” Manjrekar told on air via JioHotstar.

Sudharsan more nervous today than on his debut: Manjrekar

The former India and Mumbai batter was of the opinion that Sudharsan looked far more tense while batting in the current match than he did while batting in the first Test.

“And I really think when you have a young player to deal with, these are things you've got to be mindful of. They come with a very fragile kind of confidence. Just one Test match, dropped - would not have helped his confidence. He's come back into this Test and looking really nervous, much more than he did in his debut Test match I think,” added Manjrekar.

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Sudharsan came out to bat in the 31st over after the dismissal of KL Rahul. He went onto register his maiden half-century despite the early indecisiveness and was dismissed for 61 off 151 in the final session of the day. At the end of Day 1, India's scorecard read 264 for the loss of four wickets after just 83 overs were bowled when the umpires called Stumps. The Tamil Nadu-born has been India's highest scorer so far.