I won’t retire just because selectors haven’t picked me: Manoj Tiwary

Manoj Tiwary is one of those cricketers for whom both fitness and fate deserted them when they needed them the most. Tiwary was on his way of becoming one of the permanent members of the Indian team after his brilliant show against West Indies in 2011 at home. He scored runs, picked wickets and was just the player the Men in Blue were looking for.

Tiwary had made his India debut in 2008 in Australia in Brisbane and was clean bowled by a searing Brett Lee yorker for two runs and since then, he has played only 12 ODIs for India, along with 3 T20Is; with the last of the international match coming in 2015 on the tour of Zimbabwe. Though Tiwary was a regular part of one or another IPL team since its inception, the IPL 2019 auction saw him going unsold, which came as a jolt to the 33-year-old.

Tiwary refuses to quit over the ‘partial’ treatment meted out to him by selectors

The Bengal Ranji Trophy captain has been active on Twitter ever since his attempts of making comeback into the national team have gone in vain and has been asking the selectors what more he has to do to fulfill his dream of donning the blue jersey again. He has scored buckets of runs in domestic cricket in all formats of the game, yet has been ignored by the selectors, according to him.

Recently, he tweeted some messages after his name was missing in the recently announced Duleep Trophy 2019-20 teams. He wrote, “Since the Duleep trophy teams for the year 2018-2019 is out and I don’t see my name featuring in any of them. I want to ask the Selectors, what are the criteria for a player like me to get selected again in Duleep trophy teams or Indian team? If you guys can be kind enough to let me know?”

A fan suggested that Tiwary’s career was going the same way as Ambati Rayudu’s gone. Rayudu was the chosen one at the no.4 spot in India’s batting lineup for the whole of 2018 and early 2019, but after a couple of failures against Australia at home, he was discarded for Vijay Shankar and Rishabh Pant, and couldn’t make it into the World Cup squad. He wasn’t also picked as a replacement when two of the Indian players were injured and this led to him retiring from the game.

However, Tiwary mentioned to the fan that, “I won’t retire just because they haven’t picked me. My career doesn’t define by how many matches I have played for my country”