In reviving himself, Sarfaraz revived his team. (Sportzpics)A back-foot punch to the cover fence rang in the moment Sarfaraz Khan had waited for all his life. A Test hundred. As he watched the ball tumble to the boundary cushion, he took off. He sprinted aimlessly in cathartic joy, then skidded and stopped, leapt as high as he could, landed and stood like a statue, hands aloft. He strolled back, kissed his helmet and badge, and gazed skywards, drowned in a child-like, unalloyed joy.
It’s been some journey. The childhood years when his cricket tragic father Naushad, who used to hawk track pants and caps on railway platforms, borrowed money to build an artificial turf wicket outside his ground-floor apartment at the Taximens Colony in Kurla, where he groomed his red-ball game on a surface that did ‘kachkuch’ [jagged around]. The home-spun technique is evident in his game, as he is not a classicist like most from the Mumbai school of batting. Sanjay Manjrekar’s observation that he is the 2024 version of Javed Miandad is apt, in his emphasis of function over aesthetics, and the daring in their stroke-play.
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𝑨𝒍𝒆𝒙𝒂 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚, 𝑰’𝒎 𝒖𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆! 😎
Maiden century in Test cricket for the rising star, #SarfarazKhan 🌟#IDFCFirstBankTestTrophy #INDvNZ #TeamIndia #JioCinemaSports pic.twitter.com/vsB9IhfGTh
— JioCinema (@JioCinema) October 19, 2024
Noushad was making his son live his own unfulfilled cricketing dream, the reason he squeezed into the general compartment of a Mumbai-bound train from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh. The teenage years when he struggled to cope with the prodigy tag, the youth when his staggering consistency was consistently overlooked, a time when he fought and slayed self doubts. And now, in only his sixth Test outing he has realised the dream that has fuelled his Test career and defined his father’s life.
This was a hundred with several layers to celebrate. It was personal redemption, after his first-innings duck and the general criticism that he is not cut from the Test match cloth. In reviving himself, he revived his team. When he walked into bat, India had stumbled to 95 for 2, still 361 runs adrift of wiping out New Zealand’s total. When he perished, India had a lead of 64.
The match scenario daunted. But Sarfaraz did not wither. Rather, he clung onto this opportunity like the last lease of life. He displayed remarkable strength to not eschew his natural attacking game, despite the criticism he faced for his counterattacking endeavours in the first innings. In the company of Kohli, he breezed to his half-century. He swept—his staple shot against spinners—Ajaz Patel into submission, before he uppercut William O’Rourke for a six. Nine of his 18 fours and two of his three sixes traversed this route.
What a remarkable Wagon Wheel that is for Safaraz Khan. 👀
📸BCCIhttps://t.co/emnJzK1mVV pic.twitter.com/Qx3u5qzbWx
— Express Sports (@IExpressSports) October 19, 2024
The Deadly Late cut
The theme recurred. Whenever the New Zealand seamers tried to bounce him, he would unbox his late and upper cuts to frustrate them and alter their tactics. The Sarfaraz late-cut is not for the faint-hearted. It’s not a cut at all, in the conventional sense. It’s something between a chop, slap and a glide. He takes sophistry out of it, instills brusqueness into it, a slice of Mumbai maidan cricket. It seems an instinct he cannot resist. But it’s the Sarfaraz style.
He stretched his bat out for balls, on short and hard lengths pitched outside the off-stump. He is drawn irresistibly into it like an iron nail to a magnet. He looks far from controlled. The bowler’s heart would leap in joy when he sees this, except that with a brisk roll of the wrists, he laser guides the ball into the gaps. He rips the textbook – his feet are static, lower body imbalanced, as though he would fall over, the upper body slouches and just his hands reach out for the ball, like waving for a pillion in the middle of a highway. He doesn’t get his back-foot across, doesn’t cover the line and doesn’t bother to leave the ball. The bat stops dead as it makes contact with the ball, no ounce of control wasted in an unnecessary follow-through.
Yet, he sweet-spots this ball, yet it is his most productive shot, his weapon of destruction. Whether this shot, or rather several similar shots survive the scrutiny of the bouncy tracks with more fielders packing that arc is unknown, but on tracks with moderate bounce, the stroke bleeds boundaries.
A late slap rather than a late cut off William O’Rourke captured its utility. The hands flapped out when he realised the ball was wide and back of length. But it bounced lower than he had expected. He just crouched a bit and scythed the ball, with negligible follow through, between the deep point and deep third. It was struck with so much power that both fielders lost his race to thwart the four.
The frequency of fours this shot wrought forced dramatic field and bowling changes. Tom Latham posted three men behind the square on the off-side, the bowlers began to bowl fuller and at his stumps, nourishing his strengths. He punched Tim Southee through point for a four, and Latham soon reverted to spinners. Earlier, he made them stray onto pads, where those ferocious wrists directed them to the fence.
When he rewatches the innings, he could dwell on several splendid strokes of his. The late cut needs a separate entry in the coaching manual. But he would treasure that back-foot punch forever. The one that realised his childhood dream. And the lifetime wish of his father.
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