Luck may be riding on Sarfaraz Khan’s side. After a surprise call for the IND A side, the batter may find himself in the reckoning for the India Test squad for the South Africa series. A surprise injury to Ruturaj Gaikwad means that a spot is up for grabs in the 15-man squad for the IND vs SA Test series.
Ruturaj is a skilled first-class batter who has experience opening the innings and batting in the middle order. Filling the batter’s shoes will not be easy. However, if anybody can make himself home in red-ball cricket, it’s Sarfaraz Khan.
The batter from Mumbai averages over first-class cricket and has shown his caliber away from home in the recently concluded India vs India A match and the India A vs South Africa A match, scoring a century and a fifty, respectively.
Sarfaraz Khan: A red-ball giant
Sarfaraz Khan has been the best middle-order batter in the last couple of years on the Indian domestic circuit. The 26-year-old has scored 3657 runs at 71.70 in 41 first-class matches, including a half-century against South Africa A last week. Safaraz also has 13 centuries and 10 fifties in 61 innings, scoring fifty or more runs in every 2.65 innings.
India’s Test squad for IND vs SA series
Rohit Sharma (C), Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Ruturaj Gaikwad*, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah (VC), Prasidh Krishna, KS Bharat (wk).
*ruled out
