“ They prefer that the manoj tiwary of zone players strikes the favour, the culture of the stars in the Indian team

Former India batter Manoj Tiwary has hit out and favoritism within the Indian cricket team. When Gautam Gambhir took over as head coach, he vowed to remove star culture from the dressing room. Since then India have seen the retirements of Virat Kohli, Ravichandran Ashwin and Rohit Sharma in Test cricket. Tiwary, who played with Gambhir at KKR, matter of factly suggested that favouritism runs deeper than star culture in Indian cricket.

Liking and disliking has always been strong in Indian team: Manoj Tiwary

Speaking in an interview with Crictracker, Manoj Tiwary has laid bare on the culture in the Indian dressing room. Talking the example of former Bengal teammate Utpal Chatterjee, Tiwary lamented that only captain’s favourites make the Indian team. Chatterjee picked over 500 first class wickets for Bengal and featured in only 3 ODIs for India.

“Like I said earlier in my interview that liking and disliking is pretty strong in Indian cricket. It is not now, it is from long period of time. If a captain is from a certain zone, they prefer their zone players. And also certain captains are who will always prefer someone from their own state than the other zone,” Tiwary told Crictracker.

Tiwary’s interview comes after India announced their squad for the Asia Cup 2025. Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shreyas Iyer were major names to miss out of the 15-man squad for the tournament. The selection of Rinku Singh and Harshit Rana raised eyebrows, with Gambhir having coached them at KKR before taking the Indian team gig.

While Tiwary was careful to not take names, he believes social media is culling the favourtism to an extent. However, the cricketer-turned-politician acknowledged that player PR and media persons also play a huge role to highlight certain performances.

“Cricket fans can see by themselves in social media or in the live game. So it is difficult to keep everyone out of the equation. That is the advantage the modern day cricketers have. Once they perform, they are very much sure injustice will not happen to them. Media and individual PRs of players are very strong. Moreover social media is there and cricket fans are there to highlight their performances,” he added.