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The senior men’s selection committee of the Indian Cricket Board selected the squad of team India for the first two Tests in Nagpur and Delhi against Australia. Border-Gavaskar Trophy will commence with the first Test on Thursday, the 9th of February at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur. Whereas, the second red-ball fixture of the series will be played on the 17th of February at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi.
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Meanwhile, a few picks and omissions in the team haven’t gone down well with a section of Indian cricket fans. The selectors happened to pick the World's number one T20I batter and star Indian batting sensation Suryakumar Yadav in the Test squad. But the fans were expecting a maiden Test call-up for the talented Mumbai batter Sarfaraz Khan who has performed above the rim in domestic cricket of late.
Fans alongside a few renowned cricket pundits took to Twitter for lashing out at the chief selector Chetan Sharma and the selection criteria of the Indian Cricket Board.
Here’s how fans reacted over yet another ignorance of Sarfaraz Khan:
Very hard on Sarfaraz Khan who has literally broken the door down in first class cricket. You can't do more than he has.
— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) January 13, 2023
Same chief selector and same story in 2023! No surprise but very sad for Cricket.
— Rinky Karthik (@rinkysmile) January 13, 2023
I would love to hear from you that Ranji trophy is done and dusted, it is not anymore the criteria of teat team selection, that we pick T20 players for test team and our first class tournament is just joke infront of ipl and whiteball players.
— Sree Hari (@SreeHar44123519) January 13, 2023
Sarfraz Khan scores thousands of runs in Ranji - selectors ignore him for tests.
— Stock ball googly (@vikrantnaik) January 13, 2023
Prithvi Shaw scores a triple century in Ranji - selected for T20I.
SKY and Ishan do well in T20 and ODI - don’t get selected for ODI but gets selected in Test squad despite average FC record.
— Mahfuz (@Mahfuz39356546) January 13, 2023
If these type of selection goes on and India will be a joke to other teams. Selectors are blind at this spot and not even seeing who is performing and who is not. They are seeing performances of t20s and bringing them in test squad. 🤦🏻♂️
— Pramukh Molugu (@Bugsbunnyinsky) January 14, 2023
SKY is not even good in ODIs. He's pretty ordinary in one dayer's.
— Mano (@south235) January 14, 2023
Also they’ve wasted a fabulous opportunity to give him a go while he’s in the midst of this purple patch and high on confidence
— Rahul Kalvapalle (@Kalvapalle) January 13, 2023
Cheetah Sharma and team are useless people. The decline of Indian cricket started after Shastri left.
— King Fu Panda (@Kingfupaanda) January 14, 2023
and Sarfaraz khan needs to break Bradman record before entering test squad
— Uday Tangade (@udaytan) January 13, 2023
Level of competition is great. Unfortunately leaves many great players out of race as well.
— Pragnesh Trivedi (@ItsMePragnesh) January 14, 2023
Teams r selected based on IPL contracts,screen time,lobbying. After repeated mediocre performances some make it! umpteen chances given to come good.Samson or Sarfaraz has to slog their a.. out to barely get noticed !! Few others the board president tweets on their potential!
— Pallathz (@Pallathz) January 14, 2023
Spare a thought for Sarfaraz khan. I don’t understand what else he needs to do to get into the test team #DoddaMathu #CricketTwitter #INDvAUS
— Dodda Ganesh | ದೊಡ್ಡ ಗಣೇಶ್ (@doddaganesha) January 13, 2023
Speaking of Sarfaraz Khan, he owns brilliant numbers to his name in First-Class cricket by scoring 3380 runs in the 52 innings of the 36 matches he played for Mumbai. The 25-year-old has scored these runs with an outstanding average of 80.47 with 12 centuries and nine half-centuries to his name alongside the highest individual score of unbeaten 301 runs.
On the other hand, Suryakumar Yadav has batted in 132 innings of 79 matches to score 5549 runs with an average of 44.75 with 14 centuries and 28 half-centuries.
Although, the sudden call-up for Suryakumar Yadav to the Test squad went very surprising to a lot of cricket experts and fans as well. It is because the 32-year-old hasn’t featured in any First-Class cricket for a long time.