What more does Sarfaraz Khan have to do to get the Selectors to notice him?

This is the question on everyone's minds.

Such unanimity of opinion about any selection is rare in India. Everyone and their uncle is convinced that Sarfaraz Khan should play in the Test team. And everyone is equally sure that his absence is inexplicable. This anomaly is variously attributed to the selectors being fools, or the selectors being bent, or the selectors being clueless.

In its ubiquitous form, the charge is that this is yet another example of the typical, nameless pattern in India whose existence everyone acknowledges simply with a shake of the head - the deserving candidate snubbed by the evil, unfeeling, corrupt, clueless, arrogant powers-that-be.

Here’s the headline in Bombay’s local city newspaper this week. “Chetan” for the uninitiated, is Chetan Sharma, the Chairman of Selectors for the BCCI.

And yet, everything about Sarfaraz Khan’s time as a cricketer suggests not only that he is exceptionally capable, but that all selectors at all levels, from his school to the national selectors (including Chetan Sharma) have noticed this.

Consider his career.

His father Naushad Khan is a noted cricket coach who has trained other players who played for Bombay before Sarfaraz, like Iqbal Abdulla. He laid a synthetic pitch outside his house for his son. Sarfaraz first made his name with a quadruple hundred in the Harris Shield for his school Rizvi Springfield. He was so good, that a rival school accused him of faking his age. His father had to take him for multiple sophisticated tests (including one conducted by the MCA) to prove that he was of the age he said he was. Sarfaraz represented India U-19 in not one but two under-19 World Cups (in one of those the India U-19 head coach was Bharat Arun, later to become India’s superb bowling coach).

He played for Mumbai when he was only 17. He and his mate Suryakumar Yadav had disciplinary issues when they first played for Mumbai in 2014-15. The Mumbai Cricket Association withheld their match fees. Sarfaraz moved to the UP Ranji Trophy team for a couple of seasons before moving back to Bombay. He did well for UP.

Sarfaraz returned home to Mumbai for the 2019-20 season and had a brilliant year. Then covid hit, and the 2020-21 Ranji Trophy was cancelled. Yet, on the back of that superb 2019-20 season, Sarfaraz was picked for India A to tour South Africa. He had a reasonable outing. He made a seventy.

He returned to the Ranji Trophy from that India A series and had another top year in 2021-22 (we’re in February 2022 now). The national selectors picked him for West Zone, India A and Rest of India in 2022.

Sarfaraz continues to make runs. It’s inevitable that he’ll get a Test call up sooner rather than later unless he loses form entirely.

His career so far suggests that the selectors have not been blind to his talents or his record. At every level, pretty much all selectors have found him to be an outstanding player at that level.

India are the best team in the world right now. They’ve got an abundance of options - they’ve got young players in their early twenties like Gill, and experienced hands who have been on the international circuit for years and are used to facing the best bowlers in the world, like Suryakumar Yadav. They’ve got Test triple centurions who are not even in contention for a Test spot.

Sarfaraz Khan is going to break into the best team in the world. And it won’t be because Chetan Sharma finally notices that Sarfaraz exists. It will be because Chetan Sharma (like all his colleagues and predecessors) has had his eye on Sarfaraz for years before you even knew he existed.