Rohit stays neutral, calls Ravindra Jadeja’s outburst on Sanjay Manjrekar individual

File Photo: Rohit Sharma

File Photo: Rohit Sharma

Leeds: Ravindra Jadeja and former India batsman-turned-commentator Sanjay Manjrekar have been in the news in recent times after the latter called the former a “bits and pieces cricketer” which didnt go down well with the India all-rounder. Without taking sides, Rohit Sharma has said that each person reacts differently to different situations.

“See, that’s the challenge for the sportsman. All this distraction will happen, but every individual is different, and it depends on how he wants to think about that particular incident or situation. For me, like I said just now, I want to stay away from all of that and enjoy the beautiful weather in England,” said Rohit on Saturday.

“I have my family here as well. So most of the time I’m trying to do that rather than all those talks going around and things like that. Because as long as you’re playing, that will happen. And we have to have a logistic manager because a lot of people are staying in the same hotel as us who want us to win the World Cup, who want us to score runs, score centuries.

“So you kind of want to stay away from all of that because eventually our job is to do that, our job is to come here, play good cricket and win the World Cup, we all know that. But constantly yapping in anyone’s ear is not right. So I think for us as cricketers, it’s important to focus on the job at hand,” he explained.

Speaking to IANS, Manjrekar had said on the eve of the Bangladesh game that he still wanted to back Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav despite their poor outing against England. Reacting to this, Jadeja has asked the expert to learn to respect people.

Manjrekar did change his opinion on Saturday during the India-Sri Lanka game and called him a street-smart cricketer as he returned with figures of 1/40 and played a crucial role in restricting Sri Lanka at 264.

Published on: July 7, 2019 @at 16:43 IST

By Baidurjo Bhose/IANS