India vs Australia: Sanjay Manjrekar rates hosts' bowling in second T20I as the 'weakest attack seen for a while'

India’s bowling lineup has been receiving widespread praise for quite some time now. The way the bowlers bowled in South Africa, England and most recently Australia and New Zealand, they deserved praise. However, just a couple of months ahead of the World Cup, the team has received a wake-up call as Australia beat them two-nil in the recently-concluded T20I series. On Wednesday, the visitors thumped India by seven wickets in the second T20I in Bengaluru.

Even before the start of the game, former India batsman Sanjay Manjrekar had opined that India’s bowling lineup was the ‘weakest bowling attack seen for a while’. The cricketer-turned-commentator admitted that India were experimenting as a part of their preparation for the all-important World Cup but did not refrain from giving a scathing assessment on the bowling lineup.

Manjrekar backed his claims by pointing out that the two of the five bowlers in the lineup were Krunal Pandya and Vijay Shankar. Pandya and Shankar are both inexperienced in the international circuit and neither of them is a frontline bowler. Manjrekar took to Twitter to give his assessment of the Indian bowling, tweeting:

“I know they are playing around with team selection with WC in mind, but this has to be the weakest bowling attack seen for a while, with Krunal & Vijay Shankar as two of the five bowlers.”

Here is Manjrekar’s tweet

I know they are playing around with team selection with WC in mind, but this has to be the weakest bowling attack seen for a while, with Krunal & Vijay Shankar as two of the five bowlers.#INDvsAUS

— Sanjay Manjrekar (@sanjaymanjrekar) February 27, 2019

Indian bowlers, meanwhile, failed to prove Manjrekar wrong as they couldn’t defend 191. Siddharth Kaul and Jasprit Bumrah gave the team a flying start by dismissing Marcus Stoinis and Aaron Finch respectively with just 22 runs on the board. However, a batting masterclass from Glenn Maxwell saw Australia chasing down the big total with two balls remaining. Maxwell remained unbeaten on 113 off 55 deliveries.

Kohli defends bowlers:

The India skipper came out in defence of his bowlers after the game, saying that the dew in the second part of the innings made it tough for them. He also said that the team management wanted to try out different combinations.

“We would have liked to get across the line in at least this game but I can’t be too hard on the bowlers due to the amount of dew. We wanted to give everyone some game time, we’ve seen how they react under pressure, there is a series coming up and we’ll try more things.

It’s up to them to deliver the goods. The good thing was that the Bangalore wicket was back to normal and you could trust the lengths. I enjoyed myself but it didn’t really matter as we lost the game,” Kohli, who scored an unbeaten fifty, said at the post-match presentation.

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