ABSURD! Not AB de Villiers but Sarfraz Ahmed deserved to be in World Test XI, says this cricket icon

New Delhi: Sky Sports recently set up a three-man team of former international cricketers to pick two World Test XI's.

The team of experts included Shane Warne, Michael Atherton and Rameez Raja.

The trio was tasked with selecting a dream team each, from the current and a previous generation.

The final two teams were picked after a consensus was reached between the three former cricketers.

This is how both teams looked...

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Current World XI: David Warner, Alastair Cook, Joe Root, Virat Kohli (c), Steve Smith, Ab de Villiers (wk), Ben Stokes, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mitchell Starc, Yashir Shah, James Anderson, Morne Morkel

1990's World XI: Michael Slater, Saeed Anwar, Ricky Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Jacques Kallis, Kumar Sangakkara (wk), Wasim Akram (c), Shane Warne, Curtly Ambrose, Muttiah Muralitharan, Glenn McGrath

Warne took to Instagram to share the teams and added that Hashim Amla and Kane Williamson were unfortunate to miss out among the current players.

 

This morning @skysports asked Athers, Ramiz & myself to pick two world 11's ! 90's/00's & a Current one. This was the consensus after our selection meeting. Thoughts ? Agree / Disagree ? The two unlucky players to miss out in my opinion are Amla & Williamson. This is also a squad, the final 11 would be picked depending on conditions.

A photo posted by Shane Warne (@shanewarne23) on Aug 6, 2016 at 2:54am PDT

A key member of the Sky Sports commentary team however, disagreed with the selection of his colleagues.

In an interview to popular Pakistan cricket website PakPassion, former West Indies fast bowler Michael Holding had a rather weird objection with the selection of one particular player in the current World XI.

According to the 62-year-old, Pakistan's wicketkeeper-batsman Sarfraz Ahmed deserved to get the nod ahead of Ab de Villiers in the team.

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"Sarfraz Ahmed, in particular, is a brave cricketer and I have a lot of respect for him and not just for his wicket-keeping but his batting also. I recently saw they were picking a current World XI for Test cricket and Sarfraz's name came up as the wicket-keeper batsman.

"But sadly, without having seen too much of him in the current series and not knowing what he is capable of, they wouldn't have thought too much about him and they would instead have been thinking of someone like AB de Villiers which would be a little unfair," he said.

Apart from being a legendary cricketer, Holding is also a respected voice in world cricket. He is unafraid to take a stand on controversial matters and offers great insight into the game from the commentary box.

Despite his stature in the game, one gets the sense that not many cricket lovers will agree with Holdings' views on this matter.

While Holding is entitled to his opinion, the thought of picking Sarfraz over De Villiers defies cricketing logic.