BCCI Shortlists Five Test Pacers; Mohammed Shami And Auqib Nabi Fail To Make Cut

Indian pace bowlers Mohammed Shami and Auqib Nabi have reportedly been left out of the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) selection plans for the upcoming Test tour of New Zealand, according to multiple media reports. The tour, scheduled to begin on November 15, is set to be a pivotal assignment for the Shubman Gill-led side, with the two-match Test series carrying significant weight in India's campaign to qualify for next year's World Test Championship (WTC) final. Every fixture on the tour is now considered a must-win for India as the team looks to strengthen its position in the championship standings.

According to reports citing Dainik Jagran, India's team management has finalised a group of five fast bowlers for the Test leg of the tour, a list that reportedly does not include Shami. The veteran pacer hasn't played a Test series since the 2023 WTC Final, despite having taken 229 wickets in 64 Tests, including 15 wickets in four red-ball matches in New Zealand. Despite this experience, team management is said to be reluctant to include him for the away assignment, extending a pattern in which Shami has repeatedly missed selection for India's Test setup in recent series. 

Auqib Nabi, the Jammu and Kashmir fast bowler currently playing county cricket in England, has also reportedly failed to make the cut for the New Zealand tour. Nabi was the highest wicket-taker in the 2025-26 Ranji Trophy season and had earlier been selected for India's Test series against Sri Lanka, though he did not feature in the playing eleven during that series. His omission comes despite the BCCI having reportedly facilitated a short-term county stint for him in England, understood to be aimed at sharpening his red-ball skills ahead of the New Zealand assignment.

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Reports suggest that the five pacers currently under consideration for the Test squad include Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Gurnoor Brar, Jasprit Bumrah and Akash Deep, though the final composition remains contingent on fitness assessments. Akash Deep is reported to not yet be fully fit, while Bumrah is said to be working toward clearing fitness protocols with the BCCI's medical unit before the squad is formally announced. As a result, the exact pace bowling combination India will field across the tour's three formats remains unsettled pending medical clearances closer to departure.

The broader tour will see the Indian team travel to New Zealand in late October to compete in five T20 Internationals and five One Day Internationals, before the two-match Test series brings the trip to a close, all compressed into just over a month of cricket. The demanding schedule underscores the selectors' emphasis on managing bowler workloads carefully, a factor that appears to be playing directly into decisions around both Shami's continued exclusion and the opportunities being extended to younger fast bowlers such as Nabi and Brar.

With the WTC final berth very much in play, the composition of India's pace attack for the Test leg is expected to draw close scrutiny in the coming weeks. The selectors' apparent preference for building a bowling unit around fitness, workload management and long-term planning, rather than reinstating experienced campaigners, suggests a broader shift in India's approach to squad selection as the team heads into a high-stakes stretch of its WTC campaign.

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