Sanjay Manjrekar on Arshdeep Singh social media scrutiny: ‘Blanket rules won’t work’

Punjab Kings pacer Arshdeep Singh has found himself at the centre of a growing debate around players, content creation and the blurred boundaries between access and exposure in the IPL ecosystem. While the left-arm seamer has had a modest season on the field, picking up 13 wickets in 12 matches at an economy rate touching 10, his off-field presence has become equally discussed.

Arshdeep, who has over six million followers on Instagram, has built a strong identity through vlogs and behind-the-scenes reels that offer glimpses into team environments and player interactions. But with the BCCI and franchises increasingly conscious about messaging, access and internal information flow, there is now greater scrutiny over how much players can document and share publicly.

Former India batter and commentator Sanjay Manjrekar believes the issue is far more layered than simply restricting players from using social media. Speaking about the changing realities of modern franchise cricket, Manjrekar pointed to how dramatically team environments have evolved.

“Now, the hard fact of today’s cricket is that, with an Indian Premier League team, there are about 15 players and another 15 to 20 official members in the support staff. Can you imagine how many people are privy to what’s happening within the franchise and to cricketing decisions?

“So that is a hard one to control. Social media is a big thing, and every franchise has its own team. They have access to the players and to certain areas. It’s all about getting views, isn’t it?

“When players put up something spontaneous, something that comes from a very private space, there’s naturally going to be interest. And at the end of it, it’s also a commercial tool. The more views you have, the more chances of revenue generation through YouTube,” Manjrekar said on Sportstar’s Insight Edge podcast.

Manjrekar added that the sheer size of IPL entourages today makes information control significantly harder than it once was.

“To control the message or what’s coming out of the team is very hard. Earlier, we just had 15 people, a manager and a baggage person. That made it 17. Now you have 35 or 40.”

The conversation around player-generated content inevitably led to comparisons with former India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, one of the first cricketers to consistently build a media presence through his own YouTube platform while still playing international cricket.

Manjrekar described Ashwin as an outlier among modern cricketers.

“Just that Ashwin is a very interesting character and very different from how current players are. Nothing would stop him because that is his nature.”

He recalled how Ashwin used his platform during the COVID-19 period to engage with voices across the cricketing spectrum.

“During COVID, he was an Indian star player who interviewed 50 different people from the cricket community. He interviewed me as well, talked to Amol Muzumdar as a first-class player, and even spoke to curators.

“So he’s that kind of a guy. I don’t think he did it for viewership or anything like that. He’s just someone you couldn’t stop from doing what he wanted to do.”

For Manjrekar, Ashwin’s content creation came from intellectual curiosity rather than branding alone.

“He’s a very educated player and a very curious cricketer. He almost dissects everything and looks at it in microscopic detail.

“He clearly did all of that purely out of interest, but also to show the public, and probably the world, the real depths of cricket.”

Even so, Manjrekar stopped short of advocating either unrestricted access or blanket bans. Instead, he argued for a more balanced framework led by franchises and administrators.

“I just feel it has to be handled in a nuanced way rather than through a blanket rule. Let the team management handle it. If the franchise has a problem, then they shouldn’t do it.

“Players will do their thing. The job of the people in charge is to regulate what is allowed and what isn’t.

So it should be handled with a little more nuance.”

Published on May 15, 2026