(Cricket news) After losing the World Test Championship final to Australia, India are now set to play a 2-match series away against the West Indies. India made some big selection calls for the series. Seam bowlers Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav were not called up. Shami was reportedly rested while Umesh was reportedly injured.

Subsequently, Mukesh Kumar got his maiden call-up while Navdeep Saini returned for the first time since the 2020/21 Border Gavaskar trophy. The big call was dropping veteran batter Cheteshwar Pujara from the squad. The obvious thing to do was to replace him with a middle-order batter but the selectors roped in two openers in the form of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Ruturaj Gaikwad instead.

The selectors once again overlooked Sarfaraz Khan who is scoring heaps of runs in the Ranji trophy. According to an anonymous BCCI source the reason for his exclusion is a non-cricketing one. According to the official, his fitness is an issue along with his conduct on and off the field. There was an incident in a Ranji trophy game where Sarfaraz scored a century and pointed towards the selectors in an aggressive manner which hasn’t gone down well. Whatever is said and done if Sarfaraz Khan doesn’t play for India despite being so consistent then it would be disastrous.

Sarfaraz Khan needs to at least get a call-up to work with the team and if after that his conduct doesn’t improve then he can be dropped. His inability to deal with pace, especially the short ball, is a problem but he can work on it with the Indian team.

Sarfaraz Khan’s fitness has been heavily debated because according to him he has never failed a yo-yo test and it is just that his body type is different. He is on the heavier side as is Rohit Sharma but that doesn’t always mean a lack of fitness. Even other players like Priyank Panchal and Abhimanyu Easawaran have been overlooked while Yashasvi Jaiswal and Ruturaj Gaikwad all of a sudden have been called up.

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