The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) chairman of the selection committee, Ajit Agarkar, has revealed the reason behind the non-selection of the premier pacer Mohammed Shami in the Test squad.
Ajit Agarkar has also revealed why the selectors have not picked the senior top-order batsman Abhimanyu Easwaran for the home Test series against the West Indies National Cricket Team.
India drop Abhimanyu Easwaran from Test squad
The 30-year-old Bengal star Easwaran is a highly experienced batter as he has featured in 104 First-class matches, scoring 7885 runs at an average of 48.67, with 27 tons and 31 fifties.
Despite scoring a plethora of runs in domestic cricket and being around the Indian team for over 950 days, he is yet to receive his debut Test cap.
Since he first made it to the Indian team, several legends of the game have been phased out from the Test squad, but instead of looking at Abhimanyu Easwaran as an option, the selectors have often taken a different route.
Many expected Abhimanyu Easwaran to finally make his Test debut after Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli retired, but that didn’t happen, and he was benched for all five Test matches in the recent Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy 2025.
Even Karun Nair made his way back into the Indian Test playing XI after eight-plus years, thanks to his domestic cricket heroics, but Easwaran was sidelined.
Now Karun Nair has been dropped from the Test squad after his failure on the England tour, and alongside him, Abhimanyu Easwaran has also been dropped without getting any opportunities to play.
Normally, when you travel, you carry 16 or 17 – Ajit Agarkar on Abhimanyu Easwaran’s snub
In an interaction with the reporters at a press conference, Ajit Agarkar was asked about the non-selection of Abhimanyu Easwaran.
Replying to this, the BCCI chief selector said that they didn’t need any backup opener at the moment, and if the need arises, they can quickly add anyone to the side.
“Normally, when you travel, you carry 16 or 17. If there is some injury or something goes wrong, you can always fly a guy out and play him. Here, you get an extra spinning all-rounder Axar Patel. He wasn’t part of the squad to England, and you can only pick 15 here. So, there’s nothing to his story. KL Rahul and Jaiswal haven’t done to badly. So, at the moment, we don’t need a third opener in the squad. If we need, we can fly him,” Agarkar said in the press conference.
He has not had a lot of cricket – Ajit Agarkar on Mohammed Shami
Other than Abhimanyu Easwaran and Karun Nair, Akash Deep, Anshul Kamboj, Arshdeep Singh, Shardul Thakur, and Rishabh Pant (down with injury) are players who will miss the home series after featuring on the England tour.
Meanwhile, Mohammed Shami has also been completely ignored from the Test squad. He has not been considered for red-ball cricket since returning from a major surgery and was also deemed unfit for the England tour a few months back.
Talking about his exclusion, Ajit Agarkar said that he has not played a lot of cricket, which is why he has been snubbed.
“I have no update. He has played in the Duleep Trophy. But in the last two-three years, he hasn’t played a lot of cricket. I think he played one game for Bengal and one in the Duleep trophy. As a performer, we know what he can do, but he has to play cricket,” Agarkar said.