Sarfaraz Khan – the start of a memorable journey for the maverick from Mumbai

There were shades of Imran Tahir in the celebrations. The South African leg-spinner would set off on an extended run each time he picked up a wicket, at any level. So much so that in one club game, he ran himself out of the field of play and onto the road outside the ground. He is a maverick, all right, is Imran.

In his own way, Sarfaraz Khan too is a maverick. In a world of chiselled bodies and a premium on looking fit, he is a throwback to an amateur era when physical appearance wasn’t the be-all and end-all. But he can bat. Boy, can he bat.

Sarfaraz’s sprint around the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday morning, in the immediacy of his back-foot punch keeping its tryst with the boundary cushions at deep cover, wasn’t without excellent reason. He was now a Test centurion, in only his fourth appearance. It was the coming to fruition of a childhood dream, a dream instilled in him and his younger brother Musheer by their father Naushad, a cricket tragic if ever there was one.

There was no screaming of expletives, no ‘I am-here-to-stay’ chest-thumping. This was just pure, unadulterated joy, yells of ‘Yessss’ and ‘Come onnn’ indicating how much getting to the milestone meant to him. Sarfaraz has had to wait, some might say unfairly, for a long time to break open the doors to Test selection. Once he succeeded in that endeavour in February this year, he has been determined to stay on the right side of those doors.

Not whining

Had all other things been equal, Sarfaraz wouldn’t have played in Bengaluru. Despite 200 runs in three Tests against the English, he sat out the Chennai and Kanpur Tests against Bangladesh because such are the resources the Indian team can summon. His debut owed itself to Virat Kohli’s absence from the entire England series through paternity leave, K.L. Rahul’s unavailability for the last four Tests with a hamstring injury and Shreyas Iyer’s axing after a series of underwhelming scores. For all the volume of domestic and India-A runs, it was a backdoor entry of sorts, but Sarfaraz wasn’t complaining.

In his very first outing in Rajkot, he showed that Test cricket held no fears for him, that he was insulated from nerves and pressure and tension. He batted like he always does, with impish cheekiness. He stayed true to character and was rewarded with twin half-centuries, to which he added a third fifty-plus score in the final game in Dharamshala.

Come September and Bangladesh, and Kohli was back in the fray, Rahul had regained full fitness. How could the former skipper not figure in the XI? How could the man with a century in Centurion in December and a flowing 86 against England in Hyderabad in the first Test before he sustained the injury be overlooked? And so out went Sarfaraz, through no fault of his but in deference to pedigree and proven performances rather than just reputation and seniority bragging rights.

“I just keep following the same process as I have while scoring runs for the last four or five years,” Sarfaraz said disarmingly when asked how he kept himself motivated when he was left out owing to team dynamics. “I simply focus on the things under my control, do well in practice and try to overcome my shortcomings. Also, I talk to my father quite often since he keeps me motivated all the time.”

Promise fulfilled

Released from the Kanpur Test squad so that he could stay match-ready by playing for his state Mumbai in the Irani Cup fixture against Rest of India in nearby Lucknow, Sarfaraz had twin goals in mind – to make runs for himself, and for Musheer, who unfortunately had to miss that game after being involved in a road accident while on his way to the Uttar Pradesh capital. He promised one of his well-wishers that if got past fifty, he would score a double hundred – the first hundred runs for himself, the next for his sibling. He did go past fifty, and he did make a double – an unbeaten 222 in the first innings to help Mumbai end a 27-year wait for the Irani silverware. No one can accuse him of not keeping his word.

When he assembled in Bengaluru with the rest of the squad four days before the first Test, he had reconciled to a few minutes at nets, and plenty of hard yakka on the ground. Instead, he was thrown into the mix after Shubman Gill went down with a stiff neck.

Sarfaraz has hardly batted at No. 4 even for Mumbai, but that was the responsibility thrust upon him in the Garden City with Kohli moving up to fill the breach at No. 3 and Rishabh Pant and Rahul holding their No. 5 and No. 6 slots respectively. He couldn’t have asked for worse conditions to herald this unfamiliar challenge – a damp track, three excellent Kiwi quicks and a wobbly score board that read 10 for two in the tenth over.

That soon became 10 for three when Sarfaraz perished third ball, attempting an aggressive drive and falling victim to brilliant Kiwi catching with Devon Conway the protagonist this time. In times gone by, he would have been pilloried and castigated by the dressing-room, by the captain and the coach, but now, freedom of expression is given greater latitude and so there were no recriminations. In any case, how can you pick on one batter when the entire team has mustered only 46?

Even Sarfaraz, cool as cucumber and all wide-eyed innocence and wonderment, must have felt the heat when he walked in for a second time in two days at 95 for two on Friday after India had conceded a massive deficit of 356. But it didn’t show. Not one bit. His response to the game situation was a powerful sweep fifth ball off left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel, who had packed off both Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rohit, for four, a stroke he reprised off the next delivery just to show he meant business.

For the next five hours, he was the immovable object, falling back on the mandatory smarts needed to succeed in Mumbai that he has developed through match play, but also through goading from his father. For some reason, New Zealand believed he was susceptible to the short ball outside off-; Sarfaraz latched on to the freebies gratefully with late-cuts, dabs, upper-cuts and ramps, scoring nearly 50% of his first 100 runs behind square on the off-side.

“I like playing balls that rise high,” he explained. “I have a bouncy wicket back home (in Mumbai), and I play regularly there; the bounce easily allows me to cut the ball. “They were trying to bowl short and I played accordingly. It was fun. I was not bothered by where the ball was landing (when it left the bowler’s hand), I was just focussed on scoring.”

Wholesome entertainment

Sarfaraz’s partner in crime during the rollicking fourth-wicket stand of 177 was Pant, who both competed with and complemented his aide when it came to destruction. Pant likes the cute, but he loves the brutal even more, and it made for wonderful viewing as the stocky left-hander and the stockier right-hander systematically dismantled the Kiwis. Till such time that the entertainment lasted – and last it did for 170 minutes — it was wholesome, fulfilling, electrifying. No part of the ground was left unspared, no bowler left unpunished. 356 behind? No worries, here we are, they seemed to say.

Sarfaraz Khan celebrates with Rishabh Pant.
| Photo Credit:
MURALI KUMAR K

Pant turned 27 on October 4, Sarfaraz will get there on Tuesday (October 22) but they already share a mentor-mentee relationship. It wasn’t that long back that senior partners were charging down the track, asking Pant to rein it in when he went on one of his outrageous aggressive attempts. To see Pant replicating that after Sarfaraz lost focus when the second new ball was taken was a trifle amusing, but also indicative of the place he now occupies in the Indian dressing room hierarchy. From all accounts, Pant is Sarfaraz’s buddy and confidant within the Indian set-up, and the guru-shishya avatar appeals to both individuals, which is an excellent development from Indian cricket’s point of view because these two, along with Jaiswal and Gill, will carry the Indian batting not too long from now.

Now that a Test hundred is out of the way, Sarfaraz can move on to other things. By his own admission, he doesn’t hark back to the past or worry about what tomorrow holds because he has paid the price previously of looking too far ahead. He is determined to stay rooted to the present, and the present is hardly without promise. He has made himself all but undroppable for the Pune Test from Thursday. How do you tell a guy who has just made a sterling 150 that he must continue to bide his time, wait for his chance, hope that somehow, a slot opens up?

A first Test ton isn’t the end of the journey, just the start of a new one and if Sarfaraz loses sight of that truism, abbu will constantly be in his ear, reminding him of the miles to go before he can sleep. Micromanaging parents do bring a lot of value, too, Sarfaraz will testify.