Mumbai: Mumbai batsman Sarfaraz Khan who is just 22-years-old has seen it all in his career short career. Once considered the next batting prodigy for Team India, he never lived up to his bill.
After failing to find a starting place in the Mumbai team, Sarfaraz travelled to Uttar Pradesh to seek greener pastures. However, he never went on to make an impact in the UP team and hence returned back home.
This time however fate favoured him as he scored a triple century for Mumbai against Uttar Pradesh in a Ranji Trophy match, which could prove to be the break he had longed for.
“It’s a proud feeling to return and also join Mumbai’s triple-century club, alongside great players like Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Wasim Jaffer and Rohit Sharma,” Sarfaraz told a cricket website.
Often there have been questions raised over Sarfaraz's fitness. He was dropped from his IPL franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore as Virat Kohli wanted him to focus on getting fit. And now there seems a visible change in his fitness which has improved drastically.
“I was dropped at Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in 2016 because of my fitness. Virat Kohli told me straightaway while there were no doubts over my skills, my fitness was not letting me get to the next level. He was very honest with me about where I was,” he added.
“I knew that is when I had to get fitter. So I started working out, running, doing a lot of cardio. I gave up sweets and tried to improve my eating habits. I won’t say I became obsessed with fitness, but I just made small changes to my diet. If I had two portions of something, I changed it to one portion, and gradually cut down on my intake of junk food,” the right-hander said.
“I felt good not just about my improved fitness but because it helped me score runs and get a lead. At one point, all my team-mates used to call me ‘panda’ because I used to eat a lot. Now, they’ve started calling me ‘macho’. Actually, very few people know it’s my nickname now,” Sarfaraz goes on to add.
After being retained by Kings XI Punjab for this season's IPL, Sarfaraz confessed that it was hard for him when he was released by Royal Challengers Bangalore.
“Being released from RCB hurt me in a way, but I couldn’t do much about it. I had one of the best IPLs so far with Kings XI Punjab last year. I was in the midst of my cooling-off period, so I knew that was my only chance to impress,” he goes on to add.
