Last week, India’s selectors announced an 18-man squad to tour England for a five-Test series starting in three weeks. Eighteen is not a huge number when one considers that these five games are packed in a six-and-a-half-week window. Almost astonishingly, though, this extended squad contains only a single specialist middle-order batter, assuming that the most experienced of the specialist batters, KL Rahul, has been picked as an opener.
There is a logjam at the top, in a manner of speaking – for positions 1, 2 and 3. New Test skipper Shubman Gill hasn’t batted below No. 3 in 59 Test innings. All 36 of Yashasvi Jaiswal’s Test knocks have been as an opener. The uncapped duo of Sai Sudharsan and Abhimanyu Easwaran are top-order batters. Rishabh Pant has started to bat at No. 5, a position Ravindra Jadeja too has occupied in the past, though strictly speaking, both must be classed as all-rounders, alongside Washington Sundar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Shardul Thakur and reserve stumper Dhruv Jurel. All of this leaves Karun Nair, back in the Test squad after seven years, as the solitary specialist middle-order bat. Hmmm, you say?
Karun has smashed down the seemingly forever-closed doors to the Test side with a string of spectacular performances for Vidarbha in all formats. His batting heroics were as responsible as contributions from anyone else for Vidarbha reaching the final of the Ranji Trophy in 2023-24 and going one better in the season gone by. Nine Ranji games yielded 863 runs including four hundreds; in the final, he backed up 86 with 135 in the second innings. All this, after blazing a spectacular trail in the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy (yes, yes, different format, got it) which yielded a stunning 779 runs in eight innings at the ludicrous average of 389.50.
In the last two county seasons, the 33-year-old has amassed 736 runs for Northamptonshire in 10 matches, averaging 56.61 and boasting a best of 202 not out. To say that he is in the middle of an extended purple patch will be an understatement. Does he deserve his place back in the Test squad? Only one answer, right?
Same fate, different times: Karun’s past mirrors Sarfaraz’s present
To suggest that Karun has made the cut at Sarfaraz Khan’s expense isn’t fair on India’s only Test triple-centurion apart from Virender Sehwag. The fact that Sarfaraz has been axed after just four failures following his second-innings 150 against New Zealand in Bengaluru in October last year has been highlighted, though Karun received neither the same empathy or consideration after being dropped for just the same four failures on the back of his unbeaten 303 against England in December 2016 in Chennai.
That Karun has done more than enough to warrant a place in the Test squad on his own steam is beyond question. “At the moment, we felt Karun has put up heaps of runs over the last couple of seasons. He’s played a little bit of Test cricket early in his career, has played a bit of county cricket. We feel that he’s batting well enough,” selection panel Ajit Agarkar said by way of unnecessary explanation. “Also now, with Virat not there… we felt Nair’s experience could help.”
Sarfaraz, whose Test career began with so much promise against England early last year, hasn’t played a first-class match since November, when he was dismissed for 0 and 1 in the final Test against the Kiwis in Mumbai. Indeed, his only representative outing after that was in a pink-ball one-day warm-up game (ahead of the day-night Test in Adelaide) against a Prime Minister’s XI in Canberra that same month, when he managed just 1. In Australia, Devdutt Padikkal – drafted in as a late reinforcement from the India ‘A’ squad – and Jurel were picked to play in Tests ahead of Sarfaraz when places opened up for one reason or the other. The writing was on the wall even then. On what basis, not having played any cricket since, would Sarfaraz get the nod ahead of Karun? Alongside, potentially, as another middle-order batter if the decision-makers were convinced that he could deliver in England (clearly, they didn’t feel he could in Australia), but instead of? Nah.
It can be argued that Sarfaraz is getting precisely the sort of unkind cut Karun did all those years back, and it’s hard to argue with that argument. Perhaps, head coach Gautam Gambhir doesn’t see as much in him as his predecessor, Rahul Dravid, did. That’s a judgement call which, like all judgement calls, can be debated until the cows come home. But have Sarfaraz’s performances in recent times outweighed Karun’s completely? To borrow from Mahendra Singh Dhoni, definitely not.