The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced a 16-men Test squad for the 2-match series against the West Indies, starting July 12 in Dominica. Following the humiliating defeat in the World Test Championship (Final) against Australia, a few surprising changes were expected in the squad for the upcoming Test series. As expected, the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Ruturaj Gaikwad received maiden call-ups while batting stalwart Cheteshwar Pujara was left out.
The netizens got active on social media as soon as the squad was out. Besides the absence of Pujara, another big point of discussion was Mumbai batter Sarfaraz Khan getting overlooked yet again. Despite scoring hundreds of runs in domestic cricket, the 25-year-old batter hasn’t received a national call-up. His snub also surprised former India opener Aakash Chopra who, in his latest YouTube video, questioned BCCI for Sarfaraz’s snubs.
“What should Sarfaraz do? If you look at his numbers in the past 3 years, he’s head and shoulders above the rest. He has scored everywhere. Even then, if he is not selected… what message does it send?” Chopra said on his official YouTube channel.
“This is a question worth asking. If there’s some other reason, something which you and I don’t know, make it public. Just say that you didn’t like that particular thing about Sarfaraz, and that’s why you’re not considering him. But we don’t know if there’s something like that. I don’t know if someone told Sarfaraz about that.
“If you don’t value first-class runs, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth,” he added.
Sarfaraz scored 556 runs in 6 matches at a sublime average of 92.67 in the 2022-23 Ranji Trophy season. He was the leading run-getter in the 2021-22 Ranji season where he amassed 982 runs in just 9 innings at a staggering average of 122.75.
Earlier on Friday, domestic veteran Abhinav Mukund criticised the selection criteria in the Indian cricket team after players like Sarfaraz Khan and Abhimanyu Easwaran got ignored once again. He took to Twitter to question the selection and put out a point that why would a player will take pride in playing for the state team when franchise cricket is a faster route to get into the Indian team.
“Unable to understand these selections- too many thoughts in my head to compile into a tweet. But what is the incentive for a young player to take pride in playing for his state anymore? Clearly the franchise route is a faster way to scale the grade. #INDvsWI,” Mukund tweeted.
Unable to understand these selections- too many thoughts in my head to compile into a tweet. But what is the incentive for a young player to take pride in playing for his state anymore? Clearly the franchise route is a faster way to scale the grade. #INDvsWI— Abhinav Mukund (@mukundabhinav) June 23, 2023
India Test squad: Rohit Sharma (Capt), Shubman Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ajinkya Rahane (VC), KS Bharat (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Axar Patel, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, Navdeep Saini.
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