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, from the corner of his eyes, even as he was running his second run, he took off. He sprinted aimlessly in cathartic joy, in the direction of square leg, 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, still drowned in a child-like, unalloyed joy.
A deluge of memories would have flooded his mind. The childhood years when his cricket tragic father Naushad, who used to hawk track pants and caps on railway platforms, devoted endless mornings honing his son’s batting skills in a makeshift practice platform in a corner of the Azad Maidan. He 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 conquered self doubts. And now, in only his sixth Test outing he has realised the dream that has fuelled his Test career. “It is not that I don’t have the shots. I want a team to give me confidence,” he would tell this paper.
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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
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. Enough preconditions to daunt most cricketers making baby steps in Test cricket. 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. Seven of his 16 fours, when he was on 125, and two off his three sixes traversed this route.
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. The first time you watch, it seems fluke, or 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, rather helpless, when he ventures this. The bowler’s heart would leap in joy when he sees this, except that with a brisk roll of the wrists, he laserguides 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 breaks conventional wisdom–doesn’t get his back-foot across, doesn’t cover the line and doesn’t bother to leave the ball. 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 is unknown, but on tracks with moderate bounce, the stroke bleeds boundaries.
What a remarkable Wagon Wheel that is for Safaraz Khan. 👀
📸BCCIhttps://t.co/emnJzK1mVV pic.twitter.com/Qx3u5qzbWx
— Express Sports (@IExpressSports) October 19, 2024
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. On another instance. On another instance, the ball seamed into him, but he rode the bounce and opened the bat face with a subtle twirl of the wrists and dumped the ball between gully and slip.
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. It roused his partner Rishabh Pant, who flicked on the afterburner against Patel. Sarfaraz paddled the left-arm spinner for a four before clumping Glenn Phillips through mid-off.
He donned the lead-act in the stand with Pant, a vital one as India whittled down the lead to less than 40 runs. 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.
