Impressed with his positive start to life in Test cricket, former India captain Sourav Ganguly has said Sarfaraz Khan‘s game is more suited to red-ball cricket. Sarfaraz, who made his debut in the third Test against England in Rajkot, scored half-centuries in both innings. He became only the fourth India batter to score twin half-centuries in his Test debut after Sunil Gavaskar, Dilawar Hussain and Shreyas Iyer. The batter scored a truck load of runs in the domestic cricket for Mumbai, especially the Ranji Trohpy.
Ganguly was delighted to see Sarfaraz being rewarded for his years of toil in India’s premiere First Class competition.
“Sarfaraz is more of a five-day player. His game is more suited for that. The amount of runs he scored in domestic cricket is phenomenal. And as they say if you score runs in first class cricket it doesn’t go to waste and that’s what happened to Sarfaraz,” Ganguly told RevSportz.
Sarfaraz has scored 4056 runs in 47 FC matches at an average of 68.74 while smashing 14 hundreds and 13 half-centuries.
In the Rajkot Test, Sarafarz scored 62 runs in the first innings before being run-out following a mix-up with centurion Ravindra Jadeja. He then followed it up with a 68 in the second innings to help India win the match.
While the batter on managed 14 runs in the 4th Test, he will have a chance to end the series on a high, with India already leading 3-1 with one game left to play.
The fifth and final Test starts March 7 in Dharamsala, with India set to welcome star pacer Jasprit Bumrah, who was rested in the previous Test, which India won by five wickets in Ranchi.
KL Rahul will miss out again after he was forced out of the previous three due to a quad injury he picked up in the opener.
India squad: Rohit Sharma (capt), Jasprit Bumrah (vice-capt), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Rajat Patidar, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel (wk), KS Bharat (wk), Devdutt Padikkal, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep.
(With AFP Inputs)
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