“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.” – Calvin Coolidge, the 30th US President
Colin Coolidge did not have Sanjay Manjrekar in mind when he said this but it is the most appropriate quote to summarize the career of Sanjay Manjrekar.
No Indian cricket fan ever had an iota doubt about the talent and gift that Sanjay was blessed with when he hit the international scene. He came from a family of illustrious cricketers – he was the great nephew of Dattaram Hindlekar, one of India’s finest wicketkeepers and the son of Vijay Manjrekar, one of India’s greatest batsmen. He came into the Indian team on the back of great expectations, and a strong domestic record. He was anointed the next Sunil Gavaskar, debuting not long after the Little Master’s retirement left a gaping void in the Indian batting line up.
Sanjay’s debut wasn’t exactly what he wished for - having held fort for almost 75 odd minutes he was hit on the left eye by anasty Winston Benjamin delivery and was out of the team for 2 years. He returned in 1989 for the WI tour. His idol Sunil Gavaskar advised him to “Go out in the middle and bat like a man”. Manjrekar took his advice seriously and proved his mettle when he hit a fine century in Bridgetown facing the likes of Marshall, Walsh and Ambrose in their homeland. This was followed by 47 and 41 at Sabina Park, where Ambrose, Walsh, Bishop and Marshall were more than a handful for a clueless Indian top order. Manjrekar’s comeback tour was a proof of his mental toughness and talent where he was able to wipe out the demons of his debut. However, what placed Manjrekar on a pedestal was his eye-ball popping series Vs Pakistan in 1989. He amassed 569 runs at an average of 94.83 in 4 matches (7 innings) that included scores of 218, 113*, 83, 76 and 72.
His batting in the year 1989 still ranks as a high point in every Indian cricket fan’s viewing experience. The 429 balls Manjrekar faced in the two innings of the Faisalabad test against the pace menace of Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Naved Anjum and Salim Jaffar. The 218 in Lahore, where only a freak run out prevented him from notching up personal batting records and the poetic 113* in Karachi, which helped India, avoid the customary first away test defeat. Such was the impact of his performance that even the opposition captain, the great Imran Khan said these words in praise of the 24 year old Manjrekar, ““His technique is flawless just like that of Gavaskar. We never felt we could get him out. He went on scoring runs and runs and runs”. It was one of the best certificates of approval a youngster could get in his first full year in international cricket.
Manjrekar owned the Indian batting that year, as much as a single individual can for his test team. Sanjay had the ability to play the ball late just like his predecessor Gavaskar and he matched Vishwanath’s grace and style in playing the square-cut (again as late as he could). His resolve against some of the greatest pacers in the history of game was as solid as his forward defense. His ability to stay on the wicket for long periods of time blended seamlessly with the long cricketing tradition of concentration being considered the first hallmark of greatness. His cover drives and flicks through midwicket could convince any Mumbai cricket romantic about him being the next flag bearer of their great batting legacy.
His rise was concomitant with that one eternal quality Indian cricket fans lived through 80s and 90s: hope. The team was still grappling with Sunil Gavaskar’s retirement, when the common administrative games of captaincy roulette and a board-player spat hit the team hard. Performances of the team were anyway not good enough for the fans to find any positives. Manjrekar’s individual brilliance became that one silver lining in the sea of dark clouds engulfing Indian cricket. The 80s and 90s Indian fan behaved like a typical U.S. consumer. It is fashionable in U.S. for a consumer to commit a future cash flow for current consumption after levering it many times. The Indian fans in 80s and 90s similarly put the magnified many times the immediate promise of talent and performance and assumed their rising stars to become future world conquerers. This fan behavior was borne out of a long history of poor results – individuals were greater than the game when Manjrekar was scoring by the dozens and occupying the crease by the two scores.
But the expectations started to fall apart once the 90s set in. India toured New Zealand in Feb 1990. Given his recent heroics in Pakistan, Manjrekar was expected to anchor India’s batting in difficult Kiwi batting conditions; but he managed only 67 runs from 4 innings and never looked settled against Sir Richard Hadlee and Danny Morrison. His footwork eluded him completely, and he lost confidence playing the ball through the gaps on the off side. The misery earned him a dubious record – he was Sir Richard Hadlee’s 400th test victim.
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His travails eased a little in England in 1990 where he had two good knocks over 50 in the Manchester Test but failed to convert any of the remaining five starts in the series into substantial scores. 
Despite his struggles in the test arena, he came good in the ODIs which were never considered to be his forte. He had fair amount of success in the Texaco Trophy in England and later earned the Man of the Series awards in the 1991 Sharjah series and the home series Vs South Africa. We fans hoped this ODI success would help him on the biggest tour of his career down under.
In Australia in 1991-92, Manjrekar was all at sea, unable to adjust to the varying pace and the extra bounce and his habit of getting run out further aggravated his woes on the tour.
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Finally, in 1992-93, he was troubled no end by the South African seamers. Manjrekar was a tad unlucky to not earn a place in the side on what would have been his first full home series. After the double-debacle on the Aus and SA tours, Manjrekar was dropped for the home series against England in 1993 – the tour that turned around the fortunes of the entire team. From then on it was obvious that a comeback while in the realm of possibility, would take a humongous effort and dollops of backing by the board and the administrators.From the high echelons of supreme promise and immaculate cricket technique, Manjrekar experienced a hard landing. His fall from heroic to human, though fascinating, has not been analyzed enough. It may well be because it coincided with the rise of new Indian hopes in the form of Sachin Tendulkar. And therein may lie the key reason behind Manjrekar’s slide.
Despite a great first full year of cricket in 1989 and the attention he commanded from the purist fans, the popular buzz in the Indian cricket shifted (for the next 22 years and counting) in November 1989. When the 16 year old boy genius walked out to bat in Karachi, it was the start of the innocent brazenness of the youth sidestepping the purity of cricketing technique. The big scores didn’t show up immediately, but the big heart did. Manjrekar’s finely compiled 93 and 50 preceded the 68 and the 119 in Manchester, and yet the legions of cricket watching posterity were programmed to only recall the latter two innings.
When the 16-year old Tendulkar hit the scene in 1989, the fans had hoped that the Tendulkar-Manjrekar combination would steady the Indian middle order – the perfect combination of resilience and flamboyance at either end. The hope soon died and the fans were left wondering about what factors contributed to Manjrekar’s downfall – a sense of competition with Sachin Tendulkar, or the added pressure to keep himself relevant in India’s cricketing imagination using his modest flamboyance against the promise of greatness? Sometime in 1992-93, as Tendulkar’s career blossomed, Manjrekar went in a shell dug so deep, he forgot the way out of it. He was unable to adapt to the match situations due to his obsession towards maintaining a perfect technique. He also fell into the rut of getting run out numerous times, which further eroded his confidence and he lost his regular place in the side through the year.
Despite earning a place in the side in the ’94 home series against SriLanka, Manjrekar never looked like the batsman he was back in 1989. Post his comeback he had only four knocks over 50. The twin 50s in Mumbai against WI in 1994 gave the fans a glimmer of hope of seeing the old Manjrekar; but Srinath’s heroics and Tendulkar’s 85 on a treacherous Wankhede wicket overshadowed his contributions. Manjrekar never quite regained his old confidence on the cricket pitch post that series.
One will never be able to establish causality between Tendulkar’s meteoric rise and Manjrekar’s equally fast downfall. It is even more difficult to do so since they were good friends to the outside world. One wonders if the several tense moments Manjrekar shared on the field with Tendulkar, were a legacy of an underlying spoken friction between them. Manjrekar advising Tendulkar to play cautiously in match which concluded in fading light in Sharjah 1991 while the latter continued to play his shots. The horrendous Tendulkar run out while on run a ball 65, when India was chasing the Kiwi score of 348 in Nagpur 1995, losing eventually by a wide margin. Manjrekar’s inability to rotate strike in the world cup semi final match against Sri Lanka in Eden Gardens 1996 when Tendulkar was spearheading India’s chase of 251. These tense cricketing moments all ended in heart breaking losses for India. Off the field as well, Manjrekar was among the most prominent Tendular media critics through his lean phase in 2005-06. It is surely in the realm of possibility that Manjrekar pegged his cricketing growth to Tendulkar’s, and some of the low on-field performances and the off-field comments were a result of the constant sense of having been left behind.
Whatever be the reasons, in the end Sanjay Manjrekar’s test career spanning 37 test matches ended with an average of 37 (a full 18 points below his first class average of 55) and with only 2043 runs (only 20% of the his 10,252 first class runs). He will go down in India’s cricketing history as one of the greatest talents never to attain the full potential.
For his ardent fans like us, who followed his run through 1989 and took his place in India’s pantheon of great cricketers for granted, he remains the unsolved mystery, for we were left wondering what exactly brought about a premature Rest Day for this neoclassical talent.