Why India's Sarfaraz Khan played for a Dubai academy team in 2015

It was in the summer of 2015 that veteran Dubai cricket coach Gopal Jasapara was taken by surprise when he received a request from Naushad Khan.

A Mumbai-based cricket coach, Naushad’s elder son, Sarfaraz, had already broken scores of batting records in India’s age-group tournaments, including one set by Sachin Tendulkar.

By 2015, Sarfaraz had also played alongside Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers and Chris Gayle for the RCB team in the IPL.

So Jasapara had every reason to be surprised when Naushad sent him a message, asking him if there was room for his son in his academy team — G Force — featuring UAE youngsters on their UK tour.

“I first met this boy and his father in 2009 when he was only 12. This was after he broke Tendulkar’s record (with a knock of 439 in a school cricket match),” Jasapara recalled.

“So, Mr Naushad called Mr Shyam Bhatia (Dubai-based cricket promoter) as he wanted his son to gain some experience of playing in English conditions. Mr Bhatia asked him to get in touch with me. That’s how he joined our academy team on our 2015 UK tour.”

A lot has happened in the life of Sarfaraz since that 2015 UK tour with a Dubai academy team.

From being hailed as India’s next batting superstar to facing detractors who never missed a chance to make fun of his bulky physique, Sarfaraz was in constant battle with demons at every step of his journey.

But what never changed was his appetite for runs. He kept knocking on the selectors’ door with truckloads of runs in domestic cricket.

Eventually, that dream of playing for India was fulfilled early this year when he was called up for the England Test series at home.

Sarfaraz, whose brother Musheer is also a bright young talent, responded to the challenge of facing a top-class team with sparkling half-centuries in his debut Test match.

But he faced his biggest challenge in the first Test against New Zealand last week in Bangalore. Dismissed for a duck in India’s embarrassing first innings score of 46, Sarfaraz was under pressure when he walked in at 95 for two with India still trailing by 261 runs.

A false step there could have derailed the Test career of a player who would not have been in the playing XI if Shubman Gill was fit.

But Sarfaraz decided to throw caution to the wind, launching an astonishing counter-attack, displaying his full range of shots with a dash of cheeky and unconventional strokes.

That stunning knock of 150 may have failed to stop New Zealand from winning their first Test in 36 years on Indian soil, but it has given a big selection headache to the Indian team management.

The second Test, which starts on a rank-turner in Pune, might see Sarfaraz push KL Rahul out of the playing eleven.

Skipper Rohit Sharma will probably find it hard to overlook Sarfaraz, a proven player of spin bowling in domestic cricket who has an incredible ability to shift gears at a delicate stage of a match.

But it’s not just the talent that has made the 27-year-old such a formidable batter.

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