Impressed with his positive start in Test cricket, former India captain Sourav Ganguly has said that 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 the innings. He became only the fourth Indian batsman to score two half-centuries in his Test debut, after Sunil Gavaskar, Dilawar Hussain and Shreyas Iyer. The batsman scored a truckload of runs in domestic cricket for Mumbai, especially the Ranji Trohpy.
Ganguly was elated to see Sarfaraz rewarded for his years of toil in India's first First Class competition.
“Sarfaraz is more of a five-day player. His game is more suited to that. The number of runs he has 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 after 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 batsman scored 14 runs in the 4th Test, he gets a chance to end the series on a high with India already leading 3-1 with one match to play.
The fifth and final Test starts on 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 being forced out of the previous three due to a quad injury he suffered in the opener.
Indian 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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