Don't let his stats fool you, he's been god awful this series. Garbage keeping and could't keep himself from slashing at any single frigging delivery.
Not really. Those half centuries were completely useless to the team. Scored a 70 odd in the second innings of the last match when the game was already lost and scored a 50 odd in the first innings of the first match. Where he has required to stay on the field to help the team win or draw a game he went missing. We needed him to score in the 2nd innings of the 1st test. Had he scored a 50 odd there we could've won the game or had he stayed on in the 2nd innings of the 2nd test we may have drawn the game.
His keeping was absolutely horrific and the less we talk about it the better but his batting wasn't much to write home about either. His 50's were similar to YK scoring in the last game. He goes missing when needed.
Sarfaraz has been very poor this series.. a 73* in the final innings did little to salvage his reputation as a destructive force in the side... he's been ordinary specially facing pace bowling, he's looked clueless in front of Starc and his feet movement gets exposed to his in-dippers.
Not to forget his missed stumpings in the final game
Keeping has been pathetic. batting has been useless because it came at the time when there was no pressure. Doesn't seem like he has skills to survive underpressure and perform.
Cricket needs a new yardstick for stats called "impact quotient".
Its high time ICC creates some formula for it cos averages can be terribly misleading in short sample sets. For some, even in big sample sets.
I will give you an example.
Rahane averaged 30s in the England tour and 50s in the India-SA series played on rank turners.
On first glance, it would look like he couldn't deal with English conditions but was a champ in the spin conditions.
Reality however was 180 degrees opposite. He was COMFORTABLY the worst batsman from India in that Indo SA series and the BEST batsman from India during the Eng series.
When India-SA it was alive, he averaged teens in those tough tracks. Then followed it with a good century on a normal track in the final test and then followed that by a stat boosting 100 in the 2nd innings where we were looking to declare. But end average was 50 while the real performers Vijay and Pujara (who enabled India to win the series) averaged much less.
However in the England series, he played a knock that would be talked about for decades and followed it up with several knocks where he would look solid only for the team to crumble around him. He looked the best bat even though Vijay averaged 40 in that series. Now a case can be made that Rahane didn't make full use of his form in that series (which would be true) but what can't be questioned is his impact.
Now coming back to Sarfraz, he may average 50 but did ANYONE from Pakistan or Aus ever feel confident or threatened by him at any point during the series? No. He failed when it mattered and scored a few runs when all was said and done and remained not out. Classic case of stat boosting runs.
In this overseas cycle, I found the following bats to be impactful - I don't know about their stats.
England - Azhar Ali, Sami Aslam, Misbah, Asad Shafiq
NZ - Azhar Ali
Aus - Azhar Ali, Asad Shafiq (to an extent)
The last time I felt Sarfraz was impactful was during Aus tour of UAE. After that, he has been blowing hot and cold. He did score a few impact runs in England (if I am not wrong) but overall, his impact has been pretty low series after series for a LONG time now.
)for Sarfraz?
