He scored 92 off 119 balls in the first Test between India A and England Lions.
Priyank Panchal, who recently announced his retirement from first-class cricket, has taken a dig at the selectors for not including Sarfaraz Khan in the squad for India’s upcoming Test tour of England. While praising the batter for his excellent knock, he has slammed the BCCI selectors’ “stigma” for not considering exceptional domestic performances as a gateway to make it to the India squad.
“This stigma around solid domestic performers not being up to the mark for international cricket and hence not making the cut to final squads needs to go. Well done Sarfu,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
India A are playing a four-day Test friendlies against the England Lions before the senior teams clash for five matches starting June 20. Several players, including India A skipper Abhimanyu Easwaran, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Karun Nair, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Dhruv Jurel, and Akash Deep, are featuring in this series against the England Lions to gear up for India’s upcoming red-ball assignment.
The BCCI selectors didn’t name Sarfaraz in the senior team. However, the 27-year-old has scored a brilliant 92-run knock off 119 balls to showcase his excellence on foreign soil. He came at No.4 and joined Karun Nair early in the first innings of Day 1, after opener Yashasvi Jaiswal fell for 24 runs off 55 balls. The Mumbai player showed tremendous grit and determination and brought up his half-century off 84 deliveries.
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His 181-run partnership with Nair off 235 balls provided a strong balance to India’s innings after losing two quick wickets early in the morning. Unfortunately, the batter missed out on a well-deserved hundred as Josh Hull dismissed him on 92. However, Nair went on to continue the momentum and finished the day with 186 not out. He converted the mammoth score into a double hundred on Day 2.
After producing top-notch performances for so many years in the domestic circuit, Sarfaraz finally made his Test debut against England in February 2024. He put up 200 runs in three matches in his debut Test series. Following this, he notched up 150 in the first Test against New Zealand at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium.
However, the batter didn’t get a chance in India’s playing XI against Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) series 2024-25. India also lost the five-match series by 3-1, after back-to-back victories in 2018 and 2021. Following the recent snub in India’s tour of England, Sarfaraz now awaits another chance from the BCCI selectors to make a comeback in the red-ball squad.
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