Team India has picked its 15-man squad for the two-match Test series in Sri Lanka, and once again, two of domestic cricket’s biggest run and wicket machines have been left waiting outside the door. Auqib Nabi and Sarfaraz Khan have done everything that is usually asked of a player trying to get picked. They have piled up runs and wickets, season after season, in the toughest conditions. Yet, the national selectors have chosen to look elsewhere. This raises a simple but important question. What more do these two players need to do to earn a national call-up?
India’s squad for the Sri Lanka Tests, led by Shubman Gill, includes Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Siraj, Prasidh Krishna and Gurnoor Brar as the four pace options. Ravindra Jadeja has also made his return to the red-ball setup after a long gap, while Saransh Jain has earned a maiden call-up as a like-for-like replacement for the injured Washington Sundar.
While these picks make sense on paper, the squad also shows a clear pattern. The selectors have leaned on familiar names rather than giving fresh performers a real shot, even when those performers have been consistently good in domestic cricket. This brings us to Auqib Nabi and Sarfaraz Khan, two players who simply cannot be ignored anymore based on numbers alone.
Auqib Nabi: The Bowler Who Just Won’t Stop Taking Wickets
Auqib Nabi has had one of the best runs in Indian domestic cricket over the last two years, and yet, he remains uncapped at the international level. The Jammu and Kashmir pacer finished the 2025-26 Ranji Trophy season as the tournament’s leading wicket-taker with 60 wickets in just nine matches, at an average of 12.65. This was not a one-season wonder either. In the season before that, 2024-25, he picked up 44 wickets at an average of 13.93, which was the second-highest tally in the whole tournament.
Add these two seasons together, and Nabi has taken a massive 104 wickets in Ranji Trophy cricket over just two years. That kind of number does not happen by chance. It shows a bowler who understands how to trouble batters again and again, no matter who he is bowling against.
His importance to Jammu and Kashmir cannot be overstated either. He was the player of the match in the Ranji Trophy semi-final, picking up 5 for 87 and 4 for 36 along with a handy 42 runs with the bat, helping J&K reach their first-ever Ranji final. In that final against Karnataka, he came up big again with 5 for 54, helping the team win their maiden Ranji Trophy title in 67 years and picking up the Player of the Tournament award for himself.
Beyond just Ranji Trophy, across all senior domestic tournaments in the 2025-26 season, Nabi picked up 95 wickets in total. That is an incredible workload and an even more incredible return.
Auqib Nabi Career Stats
Given these numbers, one has to ask what more Nabi needs to prove. He has shown he can win matches on his own, in domestic finals, semi-finals, and league games alike. The one small factor working against him is that most of India’s selectors already believe the pace attack for Sri Lanka is settled with Bumrah, Siraj and Prasidh Krishna, leaving little room for a newcomer, even one who bowls the kind of skiddy, wicket-taking spells that actually suit subcontinent pitches better than some of the taller quicks in the squad.
Interestingly, Prasidh Krishna has played just one Test on the subcontinent since his debut in 2022, and Gurnoor Brar has had a mixed run so far in international cricket, following a poor outing in the series finale against England. This makes Nabi’s continued omission even harder to fully explain, purely on the basis of conditions and current form.
Sarfaraz Khan: Runs In Bulk, But Still Waiting
Sarfaraz Khan’s case is just as puzzling, if not more so. The middle-order batter has not played for India since the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy, and his last Test appearance goes back even further than that. In the six Tests he has played so far, Sarfaraz has scored 371 runs at an average of 37.10, including one century and three fifties. That is a strong return for a player who is still waiting for a settled run in the side.
Since being dropped, Sarfaraz has done exactly what is expected of a player fighting for a comeback. He has kept scoring runs. In the 2025-26 Ranji Trophy season, he scored 429 runs in seven matches at an average of 53.62, numbers that are close to what fellow batter Devdutt Padikkal managed in the same tournament, and Padikkal has found a spot in the Sri Lanka squad.
Sarfaraz has also worked hard on his white-ball game over the past year. In List A cricket, he averages 34.94 across 37 matches, with a strong strike rate of 94.16 and two centuries to his name. In T20 cricket, his numbers are even more eye-catching, with 1,188 runs in 96 innings at a strike rate of 128.29. His IPL numbers also tell a similar story, with 585 runs in 37 innings at a strike rate of over 130.
Sarfaraz Khan Career Stats
What makes Sarfaraz’s case stand out even more is his skill against spin bowling. He is known for using sweep shots and quick footwork to unsettle spinners, a skill that is becoming rare among Indian batters at a time when questions are being raised about how well the current batting group plays quality spin in home conditions. This should have worked in his favour for a series in Sri Lanka, where spin will play a big role, yet he finds himself out of the squad once again.
What Do They Actually Need To Do Now?
This is where the real question comes in. Both Nabi and Sarfaraz have already ticked almost every box that domestic cricket asks of a player. Nabi has won a Ranji Trophy final almost single-handedly and finished as the tournament’s top wicket-taker for two years running. Sarfaraz has scored heavily across formats, worked on his fitness and fielding, and shown he can also adapt his batting style for white-ball cricket.
So what is left for them to prove? Is it about fitting into a certain bowling profile, as seems to be the case with Nabi, where taller, hit-the-deck pacers are being favoured over skiddy ones who might actually suit subcontinent tracks better? Or is it about waiting for the team management to trust domestic form over reputation, as appears to be the case with Sarfaraz, who has not been given a proper run since his return to domestic cricket?
Neither player seems to lack skill, hunger, or consistency. What they seem to lack is a clear opportunity, and until that comes their way, both Auqib Nabi and Sarfaraz Khan will keep doing the only thing they can control, which is scoring runs and taking wickets, match after match, season after season, in the hope that the selectors are watching closely enough to notice.
The post Runs, Wickets, Records: What Else Do Auqib Nabi And Sarfaraz Khan Need To Do To Get Picked Into Team India’s Test Squad appeared first on Sportzcraazy.
from Cricket News & Updates | Today Cricket Rankings | Latest Match Schedule https://ift.tt/0n9NstI
via IFTTT
0 Comments