India, Oct. 22 -- The BCCI recently announced India A squads for the South Africa A series. The omission of Sarfaraz Khan was the biggest surprise, and that triggered an immediate debate. The batter has shown brilliant form in the domestic circuit for quite some time and also earned a place in the Test squad because of that. But instead of getting a good runway at the highest level, he has been ignored from the national side in the last few series. Now, his exclusion from the India A side is a setback for the middle-order batter.

Sarfaraz's last three Ranji Trophy campaigns form a sustained productivity arc -

The 2021-22 and the 2022-23 seasons, at an average of 122.75 and 92.66, are campaign-defining outputs. Even in a truncated 2023-2...