"It was almost bizarre what happened" - Sanjay Manjrekar highlights India's key mistakes in ENG vs IND 2025 1st Test

Former cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar highlighted some key mistakes made by the Indian team during the first Test against England. The opening Test concluded with the hosts clinching a five-wicket victory at Headingley, Leeds.

India dropped several catches throughout the Test, which proved to be costly and eventually cost them the game as well. Yashasvi Jaiswal dropped four catches, including two of Ben Duckett and those of Ollie Pope and Harry Brook.

Talking on ESPNCricinfo, Sanjay Manjrekar called the dropped catches 'bizarre'. He stated that good fielders like Jaiswal dropped catches, which did not make it any easier for India.

"It was almost bizarre what happened. It's not like India is a very bad fielding side or India carrying two or three poor fielders for their other skills. Yashasvi Jaiswal is a very good fielder. Ravindra Jadeja as well. Rishabh Pant couldn't figure out where the ball had gone. So these are all good fielders who have dropped catches. So yes catches didn't make India's job easier," he said.

India failed to defend a target of 371 runs on the fifth day as England chased it down in the fourth innings, looking in control for most of the run-chase.

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"Don't think it's fair to bring that out" - Sanjay Manjrekar on India's batting collapses

Talking about India's batting collapses, Sanjay Manjrekar stated that while it did hurt, he believes it is not fair to bring it up as the team did well considering the batting line-up is relatively new with some experienced and senior players missing.

"It definitely hurt. But I don't think it's fair to bring that out. Because it is very glaring. But in the end, in the first effort in England with a pretty new batting line-up, missing some very important senior batters, India got 475 (471) in the first innings and backed that up with almost 400 in the second innings. And that is a tremendous batting effort overall. Earlier we would have better performances from the lower half because the first half was collapsing. So you have to choose which one you want. I don't see that as a major issue because India eventually got enough runs on the board," he explained.

India went from 430/4 to 471 all out in the first innings and went through a similar collapse in the second innings, where they slipped from 333/5 to 364 all out.