Thus, the stage seems set to introduce another promising Mumbaikar—Sarfaraz Khan
India’s Sarfaraz Khan (left) and Yashasvi Jaiswal during a net session in Rajkot on Tuesday. Pic/Getty Images
On a day when the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium, on the outskirts of Rajkot, was named after SCA’s renowned cricket administrator Niranjan Shah, another famous son of the city Cheteshwar Pujara was away from the limelight.
Pujara overlooked
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The latter was an integral part of the Indian Test team for over a decade, but with advancing age he finds himself overlooked by the selectors and team management, who have made up their mind to look beyond Pujara and are planning to groom Sarfaraz Khan to take over the responsibility of the Indian batting.
The Indian team are at a stage where star players like skipper Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ravi Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja are over 35 and will gradually be required to give way to youngsters. Pujara is in the same age-group, but has had to make way for a younger batter in the Test team more due to his dour batting style. Though he has played 103 Tests and scored over 7,000 runs with an average of 48, his slow and steady approach is now considered outdated.
Modern Test cricket has changed for batsmen, who are required to get runs at a fast clip, and with England playing the Bazball brand of cricket, rival teams are under pressure to counter that tactic by scoring at a rapid pace themselves.
Jaiswal looks set
Luckily, free-scoring opener Yashasvi Jaiswal has proved to be a dashing batter, having scored a big hundred in the series, and seems to have cemented his place in the team. India now require a similar effervescent batter in the middle-order. Thus, the stage seems set to introduce another promising Mumbaikar—Sarfaraz Khan.
He has been a prolific run-getter in domestic cricket for a few seasons now. In a recent game against the England Lions in Ahmedabad, he got a big hundred too. He has the form and the talent. All he needs to do is grab the big opportunity opened up by the dropping of his state-mate Shreyas Iyer.
The mood in the Indian camp seems to be in favour of Sarfaraz, but one must wait till the toss to see whether the team management decides to debut the stocky middle-order batter from Mumbai in the absence of stalwarts like Kohli and KL Rahul.
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