Unpopular opinion: BCCI made the right decision by not selecting Suryakumar Yadav for the Australian tour

When the team for Australian tour was announced, many took to social media to express their disappointment and anger. There were two reasons for that - the omission of Rohit Sharma citing fitness concerns, and the omission of Suryakumar Yadav from the T20I squad.

For the latter, the groundswell of fan support only increased after he scored a match-winning 79 runs off 43 balls against RCB.

India's T20I team for the Australian tour was announced in BCCI's recent tweet (refer below).

#TeamIndia T20I squad: Virat Kohli (Capt), Shikhar, Mayank Agarwal, KL Rahul (vc & wk), Shreyas Iyer, Manish, Hardik Pandya, Sanju Samson (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Shami, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Varun Chakravarthy

— BCCI (@BCCI) October 26, 2020

Soon after they tweeted, the fans as well as the experts started criticizing the BCCI's decision to not include Suryakumar Yadav in the squad. Here are a few of the comments in that regard:

Surya Kumar Yadav should’ve been on the flight to Australia. For the T20i series. #MI

— Aakash Chopra (@cricketaakash) October 28, 2020

I wonder if Suryakumar Yadav fancies playing International cricket he might move overseas #CoughNZCough

— Scott Styris (@scottbstyris) October 28, 2020

To set the record straight, I have nothing against Suryakumar Yadav; I actually want him to be a part of the Indian team. But there is one big stumbling block standing in the way of that: there is just no place for him in the current Indian team structure.

India's middle-order is stacked, with the likes of Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey and KL Rahul. Dropping any one of the these three players after their performances in New Zealand series would be unfair.

For the record, Shreyas Iyer scored at an average of 51 and Pandey finished with a strike rate of over 150 in the NZ series. How can anyone be dropped from the team after such a fabulous performance?

Another point people are making against BCCI is they could have at least taken SuryaKumar Yadav as part of the contingent, even if they didn't want to include him in the XI. But is there really any value in taking a player all the way to Australia, just to make him warm the bench?

Something like that can dampen the player's opportunities in the future, like it did with Karun Nair after the England Test series.

Many cricketers fail to get an opportunity to realize their dreams of wearing the blue jersey even after years of hard work, just because of the highly competitive nature of the game. That's not an indictment of the selectors; it is just an unfortunate reality arising out of the sheer quality of talent present in India.

The extremely talented Suryakumar Yadav will surely play for India sooner or later. But as of now, he just needs to keep racking up those runs and be patient with his endeavors.

Surya namaskar 🙏🏻. Stay strong and patient @surya_14kumar #MIvsRCB pic.twitter.com/oJEJhekwpC

— Ravi Shastri (@RaviShastriOfc) October 28, 2020