Sarfaraz Khan replaces Sudharsan for the Sri Lanka Tests, 21 months after his last one
Sai Sudharsan’s toe has not cleared in time for Galle, and India have turned to a batter who last played a Test in November 2024. Sarfaraz Khan joins the squad in Colombo this week.
Aug 10, 2026
Sarfaraz Khan is back in an India Test squad. The BCCI named the Mumbai batter as Sai Sudharsan’s replacement for the two Tests in Sri Lanka on Sunday, six days out from the series opener in Galle, after Sudharsan’s toe failed to clear in time.
Sudharsan retired hurt with a stress reaction in his right toe during India A’s unofficial Test against Sri Lanka A in Galle, and has been rehabilitating at the Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru since. The board says he is recovering well and that the medical team is monitoring him. He is simply not at the fitness level five days of Test cricket demands.
Six Tests, and none since November 2024
Sarfaraz has played six Tests, all of them in 2024. He has 371 runs at 37.10, and the last of those innings came against New Zealand at the Wankhede in the first week of November 2024. Twenty-one months is a long gap for a batter who had only just got in.
The runs were never the argument against him. His 150 in Bengaluru in October 2024 came in the second innings of a Test India had started by being bowled out for 46, off 195 deliveries of properly aggressive batting, and he had made a duck in the first innings of the same match. Three Indians have now managed a duck and a 150 in the same Test. He is one of them.
What cost him his place was the rest of it. Selectors had concerns about his fitness and his movement in the field, and in a side that fields as hard as this one does, that is not a small thing. He went away and did something about it, then averaged over 53 in the Ranji Trophy last season.
The other name on the list
Shaik Rasheed was the alternative, and on paper his case was tidy. The 21-year-old was in Sri Lanka last month with India A and made 45, 63 and 20 across the three innings, which is exactly the kind of recent evidence in exactly the right conditions that selectors say they want.
They went with experience instead. For a two-Test tour that has already lost its first-choice quick and a settled top-order batter, that is defensible. Galle in August is not where you hand somebody a debut and hope it holds, and Sarfaraz has faced Test spin in Asia before.
Three absentees, and the questions that follow
Sudharsan is one of three first-choice players India will do without. Jasprit Bumrah was ruled out earlier this month with the left knee problem he picked up fielding in the Cardiff ODI in July, and Washington Sundar was unavailable for selection. Both Sudharsan and Bumrah had been named in the original squad subject to a fitness clearance from the CoE. India lost both.
That run has put the Centre of Excellence under scrutiny it is not used to, and VVS Laxman, who runs it, spent the weekend pushing back. There has been no miscommunication between the CoE, the team management and the selectors, he said, and the CoE “is not a rehab centre” but a facility with a wider brief from the board.
The more awkward fact sits underneath that. The CoE has had no Head of Sports Science and Medicine since Nitin Patel resigned a year and a half ago. Andrew Leipus was lined up and withdrew late. A board that schedules as much cricket as this one is running its injury-management operation with a hole at the top of it, and three missing first-choice players in one squad is what that eventually looks like.
Where he fits at Galle
Not automatically in the XI. Devdutt Padikkal made 142 not out off 164 balls at the Nondescripts ground in Colombo last week and has the better claim on the vacant middle-order spot right now. Sarfaraz arrives as a batter with a case to argue rather than a place to fill.
Shubman Gill, who sat out day one of that warm-up as a precaution after taking a blow on his right ring finger in training, batted on the final day for 44 off 54 with the finger taped. Spin coach Sairaj Bahutule says the captain is ready. India move on to Galle this week for a first Test starting 15 August, with the second in Colombo from 23 August, and Sarfaraz has five days to remind everyone what he does.