'What is The Incentive For a Young Player to Take Pride in Playing for His State Anymore?': Abhinav Mukund

India’s domestic cricket stalwart Abhinav Mukund criticised the selection criteria in the Indian cricket team after players like Sarfaraz Khan and Abhimanyu Easwaran got ignored once again. The BCCI announced the squad for the two-match Test series on Friday as made some big changes in India’s red-ball set-up by dropping the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara and Umesh Yadav.

The upcoming Test series will mark the start of next World Test Championship as the selectors decided to give chances to youngsters like Ruturaj Gaikwad, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Mukesh Kumar.

However, players like Sarfaraz and Easwaran missed out once again despite scoring consistently well for the state teams in domestic cricket.

Also Read | Cheteshwar Pujara Dropped as India Make Big Changes in Test Squad For West Indies Tour

Mukund took to Twitter to question the selection and put out a point that why would a player will take pride in playing for the state team when franchise cricket is a faster route to get into the Indian team.

“Unable to understand these selections- too many thoughts in my head to compile into a tweet. But what is the incentive for a young player to take pride in playing for his state anymore? Clearly the franchise route is a faster way to scale the grade. #INDvsWI,” Mukund tweeted.

Also Read | India Test Squad for West Indies Series: Transition Gets Underway as Selectors Drop Cheteshwar Pujara, Umesh Yadav

Mukund has often backed Sarfaraz to get a maiden call-up in the Test team.

The Mumbaikar has been performing consistently well in the domestic circuit for the past couple of years but still failed to get the attention of the Team India selection committee yet. He scored 556 runs in 6 matches at a sublime average of 92.67 in the last Ranji Trophy season. He has been scoring a plethora of runs for the past couple of years. He was the leading run-getter in 2021-22 Ranji season where he amassed 982 runs in just 9 innings at a Bradman-Esque average of 122.75.

India Test squad: Rohit Sharma (Capt), Shubman Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ajinkya Rahane (VC), KS Bharat (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Axar Patel, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, Navdeep Saini.