I couldn't sleep entire night, century kept playing on my mind: Sarfaraz Khan

In-form Mumbai batter Sarfaraz Khan continued with his good form in the Ranji Trophy, scoring another big century on day two of the recently won quarter-final clash against Uttarakhand. Debutant Suved Parkar won the Player of the Match award for his 252-run knock in the first innings, but Sarfaraz played a crucial knock of 153 runs as well to help Mumbai seal a humungous 725-run win. He didn’t get a chance to bat in the second innings as captain Prithvi Shaw declared the innings on 261/3 on day three.

The Mumbai side declared their first innings on 647/8 on day two with Parkar scoring 252, Sarfaraz Khan 153, and Shams Mulani and Armaan Jaffer scoring fifties. The Mumbai bowlers bowled out Uttarakhand for just 114 runs with left-arm spinner Mulani taking five wickets. Mumbai then scored 261/3 from just 58 overs with Yashasvi Jaiswal scoring a century and Prithvi Shaw and Aditya Tare scoring quick fifties. The Mumbai bowlers shined again to topple Uttarakhand’s innings for just 69 runs with Mulani taking another three wickets to guide Mumbai to the last four of Ranji Trophy 2022.

Sarfaraz Khan leads the chart and talks about hard work off the pitch

The 24-year-old Mumbai-born batter was unbeaten at the end of day one with 69* runs. He had converted five of his last 11 fifties into centuries and talked about his willingness to convert this one too on day two. He addressed the media after the second day’s play and expressed his thoughts before scoring a century.

“I wanted to score a century, I can’t let it go so easily. I couldn’t sleep the entire night. A century kept playing on in my mind the entire night yesterday,” Sarfaraz told the media.

He scored his third century of this season with a six to Akash Madhwal over the third man and went on to score 153 runs off just 205 balls with the help of 14 fours and four sixes. With this century, he also overtook Chetan Bist as the leading run-scorer this season with 704 runs from just five innings. He also talked about his off-the-pitch hard work in recent years which has helped him score 2252 runs from just 23 First-Class matches with an impressive average of 80.42 so far.