Sanjay Manjrekar's playing days may be long gone but the former India player still manages to stay relevant and make headlines more than some of the active cricketers in the circuit.
The 58-year-old is currently performing the role of a broadcaster in the 17th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and has copped a lot of criticism from netizens.
Having been assigned the responsibility to conduct the toss during the Rajasthan Royals and Royal Challengers Bengaluru game on Saturday (April 6) in Jaipur, Manjrekar triggered netizens again.
Notably, the game between the two sides at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur held a lot of significance due to a prominent reason.
In a bid to encourage women-led transformation in the region, Rajasthan Royals had decided to carry out a #PinkPromise initiative. As per the initiative, Rajasthan decided to provide to solar power to six homes for every six smashed by players from both sides during the game.
Manjrekar gave a brief overview of Rajasthan Royals' initiative and remarked "Now, back to serious business of flipping the coin in the air" to switch to the proceedings related to the game. Manjrekar's remark irked many social media users and they wasted no time in lashing out at the Mangalore-born.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Manjrekar has ended up receiving social media backlash. Manjrekar had severely criticised India's star allrounder Ravindra Jadeja during the ODI World Cup 2019 and called him a "bits and pieces" player.
While Jadeja hit back at Manjrekar and asked him to respect "people who have achieved", numerous cricket fans grilled Manjrekar for making the comment.
In another incident that took place in November 2019, Manjrekar got involved in an on-air verbal spat with fellow commentator Harsha Bhogle and was later removed from the BCCI's commentary panel. He subsequently accepted that he was unprofessional with Harsha and was reinstated after apologising to the board.
Here's how netizens reacted to the incident:
