Not selecting Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara may cost the Indian team heavily, South African tour is not easy

In the era of T20 cricket, there are very few players who know how to play old-school cricket. Such players are called test specialists. Other teams hardly have such a player in the name of a Test specialist. But India has three each. Despite this, the Indian selectors do not value these greats and they are dropped from the team without any solid reason.

Something similar has happened once again in the Indian team going on the South Africa tour. India has Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ravichandran Ashwin as Test specialists. But despite this, the players of these teams have to struggle to remain in the team. Ashwin did not get a chance to play in the final of the World Test Championship (WTC). Now Pujara and Rahane have been dropped from the South Africa tour and they have not been selected in the Test team.

The selectors have not issued any statement regarding why both were not selected. If the main reason is form, then Rahane had performed brilliantly in the final of the recent World Test Championship. Apart from these two players, the form of captain Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli has also not been good for some time.

Rahane returned in the final of the World Test Championship (WTC) and in that match, he batted brilliantly and played innings of 89 and 46 runs. But after this, he could not do anything special on the West Indies tour. He could score only 11 runs in two innings of two Tests. Before that, he did not get a chance in the Test series against Sri Lanka and Australia.

At the same time, Cheteshwar Pujara has also not got a place in the Test team. Pujara last played the World Test Championship final against Australia in June this year. In that, he played innings of 14 and 27 runs in two innings. Since then he has been out of the Test team. The gist of the story of Rahane and Pujara is that both these batsmen have not performed too badly, but they have also fallen short of the kind of big scores expected from both of them.

Indian batsmen also face problems on South African pitches. In such a situation, young batsmen will find it difficult to bat here. Pujara and Rahane have experience playing on such pitches. Especially Rahane who likes to bat on bouncy pitches.

India played a Test series for the first time on South African soil in 1992, when Mohammad Azharuddin was the captain of the team. India had to face a 1-0 defeat at the hands of South Africa in this test series. After this, the Indian team has not been able to win any Test series on South African soil since 1992. India has played a total of 8 Test series on South African soil, including the 1992 tour. India has faced defeat in 7 out of these 8 test series. Whereas during the 2010-2011 tour, India had drawn a Test series under the captaincy of Mahendra Singh Dhoni.