Sarfaraz Khan, I have a massive soft spot for the ‘Mumbai mulga’—after all we both played on the same ground as kids—Cross Maidan, Churchgate. He plays his cricket like a schoolboy—eager, earnest, effervescent—huge underdog, will he ever get his chance, we wondered.

He waited, his father waited, for years. Plundered thousands of runs in domestic cricket, he was as they said, “knocking down the doors for the selectors to listen”. Was anyone listening?