File of Sanjay Manjrekar
Former Indian cricketer Sanjay Majrekar on Saturday defended his seven-year-old tweet predicting Indian skipper Virat Kohli's Test career after a social-media user highlighted the tweet.
Following a poor start to his Test career that saw Kohli score only two half-centuries in nine innings, Manjrekar had tweeted back in January 2012, during India Test series in Australia, to give Kohli one more chance in the series only to be sure that he does not belong to world cricket.
"I would still drop VVS & get rohit in for next test.Makes long term sense. give virat 1 more test..just to be sure he does not belong here," read his old tweet.
The tweet was highlighted by a social-media user on Saturday with the caption, "This is the tweet of the decade for me." Manjrekar immediately replied to the tweet clarifying his old prediction.
Manjrekar wrote in his defense saying, "Very proud of that tweet. In his 1st year in Tests, after scores of 11,0,23,9 in Aus, I remember, fans/media saying Virat does not belong here & had his neck on the chopping block for the next Test. I said give him 1 more Test to be sure. Glad Dhoni & me were on the same page."
Kohli found the right rhythm in the very next match, in Perth, scoring 75 and followed it up with his maiden Test century en nroute to a score of 116 in Adelaide which later turned out to be his favourite run-scoring venue. And Kohli never looked back. He eventually ended the year with over 7000 Test runs, second to only England's Alastair Cook. However, in terms of international cricket, Kohli scored 20960 runs, the most by any batsman in a decade.
