Ravi Ashwin and Harshit Rana. (Photo Source: Disney+Hotstar)
There were two debutants for the Indian team in the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT 2024-25), being played at the Optus Stadium, in Perth. Kolkata Knight Riders fame, Harshit Rana and Sunrisers Hyderabad’s latest find, Nitish Kumar Reddy made their Test debut for India. Notably, Ravichandran Ashwin handed the debut cap to Rana, while India’s star batter, Virat Kohli gave Nitish Kumar his debut cap.
In the commentary box, former India cricketer, Sanjay Manjrekar, who was behind the microphone reminisced his debut moment and elicited laughter. Manjrekar at the behest of his plight, revealed that his debut cap was handed to him by a hotel concierge. It is worth noting that, former cricketer Zaheer Khan, had opined to go with either Nitish or Harshit Rana for the first Test, but the team has fielded both the youngsters.
“My debut cap was handed over to me by the hotel concierge,” said Manjrekar while on air.
It was a poor supply of technology to TV umpire: Manjrekar
The highlight of Day 1 of the Perth Test was KL Rahul’s wicket. Rahul was looking solid in his defence and was also leaving the balls bowled outside off. However, he was dismissed by a back-of-a-length delivery by Mitchell Starc. Rahul went upstairs and the replays revealed a spike after the balls passed the bat. However, he was adjudged out and Manjrekar blamed the “poor supply of technology” in Perth.
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“So ideally, if there was bat, as an edge to the ball, there should have been an earlier spike because clearly two events there, and the umpire obviously heard one noise. The visual certainty was bat hitting the pad. If that was the spike, then there wasn’t an outside edge. If we were shown two spikes, then you could say the first one was the bat. So it was a poor supply of technology to TV umpire, and he should have said he can’t nail it,” said Manjrekar to Star Sports.