The 18-man Test team for England, which was revealed on Saturday, was more or less as expected. While the injured Mohammed Shami was excluded, Karun Nair made his highly anticipated return to the Indian squad after eight years, Sai Sudharsan and Arshdeep Singh received their first Test selections, and Shubman Gill served as captain. But the name that sparked debate was Sarfaraz Khan. The 27-year-old Mumbai batter, who has performed adequately in the opportunities he has had while representing India, was left off the team. Sarfaraz was given the boot despite being a member of India's team in Australia, despite scores of 69 and 56 against England and a brilliant innings of 150 against New Zealand, even if it was in a losing cause.

In response to Sarfaraz's exclusion, former India batsman and broadcaster Sanjay Manjrekar criticized the team chosen by the BCCI chairman of selectors, Ajit Agarkar, and head coach Gautam Gambhir. Manjrekar believes that, in contrast to the Virat Kohli-Ravi Shastri and Rahul Dravid-Rohit Sharma eras, the current leadership team would choose players according to their own intuition rather than on performances, which Sarfaraz has suffered from.

"With Rohit no longer there and under Gambhir's leadership, I see a tendency in this management to pre-empt performances of individuals while making selections. Manjrekar wrote in his piece for The Hindustan Times, "The prevailing idea here is to use their own opinion of the probable success and failure of players depending on circumstances and opposition."

Consider the case of Sarfraz Khan. Sarfaraz did not play a single game in Australia, despite having three fifties and a 150 at home in four tests and falling in just four innings after that. Even with his recent performance far surpassing that of Karun Nair, he has been left out of the England tour as well. Therefore, this exclusion is based on someone significant in the leadership team believing that Sarfaraz would not score runs in England and Australia, while Karun Nair would.

However, is Sanjay Manjrekar right?

However, Manjrekar's interpretation of the Nair vs. Sarfaraz comparison is open to discussion. Nair has been on fire, scoring runs in every competition he has participated in. Nair was the top run scorer in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, collecting another 779 runs, and he also scored 863 runs in nine games for Vidarbha in the Ranji Trophy. Nair scored 89 for Delhi Capitals this year, even though it was his first IPL game in three years.

The last time Sarfaraz Khan played was in November, during a practice game for India. Since then, he has concentrated on getting in shape, losing 10 kg in the process, but he suffered a setback when he was left off of India's team for the five-Test series in England.

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