Sarfaraz Khan was first quoted on ESPNcricinfo on November 5, 2009. The first words that follow the first quotation marks: “My father”.

Sarfaraz was 12 then, and already, like so many other precocious run machines from Mumbai, on his way to becoming a household name and a household face. He had just broken the record for the highest score in the Harris Shield, an inter-school tournament that’s famous for its role in the lives of, among others, Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli.

“My father,” Sarfaraz said, “was telling me I should try and better Tendulkar’s score.”

Twelve years old, and already, in so many eyes, a future India player.

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The future arrived on Thursday, February 15, 2024 – 14 years, three months and ten days after that knock of 439 in the Harris Shield.

Sarfaraz has traversed a long and twisty road to get here, and Naushad Khan – his father, his abbu, his coach – has been with him every step of the way.

Naushad was there on Thursday too, and it was to him that Sarfaraz first went when he received his Test cap – from Anil Kumble, no less. Sarfaraz’s story is every bit the story of his abbu too, so it only felt natural that Naushad was front and centre in the BCCI video feature of his cap presentation, and that Naushad would occupy a guest slot on TV commentary.

Both times, he spoke of the long wait he and Sarfaraz have endured before getting to experience this moment. It isn’t often that a batter averaging 70 has to play 45 first-class games before getting his first India call-up, but nothing in Sarfaraz’s career has ever been straightforward. Naushad spoke about the frustrations of this wait, but he also spoke of finding a new perspective, a new way to view that wait now that it was over.

“Give the night’s passage its time. The sun will emerge in its own time.”

By the time Sarfaraz made his way to the middle of the Niranjan Shah Stadium, he had had to do a bit more waiting – behind a fourth-wicket partnership of 204, spanning nearly 55 overs, between Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja.

“I was sitting padded up for nearly four hours,” Sarfaraz said at the end of the day’s play. “I was thinking I’ve had to be so patient through my life, let me show a little more patience now.”

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At some point during Sarfaraz’s wait, Cheteshwar Pujara batted in the nets outside the stadium, an India player in 104 Tests but now a Saurashtra player preparing for a Ranji Trophy game. Pujara and Sarfaraz are as dissimilar in style and temperament as two batters can possibly be, but they are both incredibly prolific run-getters in age-group and domestic cricket, and both their stories are inextricably tied to their fathers’ dreams.

If you believe in such things, there were good vibrations lying in wait for Sarfaraz.

When Sarfaraz walked to the middle, he was walking on to Pujara’s turf, and Jadeja’s too. Both have made triple-hundreds here in first-class cricket, and two doubles each. When Sarfaraz joined Jadeja, he and Pujara had also made one Test century apiece on this ground. Jadeja was 16 runs away from another.

Sarfaraz took strike to Mark Wood bowling to a packed leg-side field: short leg, two midwickets, a fine leg, a long leg, and a deep square leg. Three balls were left of the over, and all three were short. Sarfaraz ducked two of them, and rode the bounce of the other to defend it. Before each ball, Jadeja walked down the pitch and spoke to Sarfaraz.

Sarfaraz wanted this. He had asked for this.

“Even at lunch time, I had spoken to him. I told him, ‘Jaddu bhai, please keep speaking to me [if we bat together]’, because I like to chat when I bat, [about] what’s happening [in the game], what’s not happening. And it was my first time, so I was telling him, when I come in initially, please talk to me.”

This was an anxious time for Safraraz, a strange time. In his press conference, he used the Urdu/Hindi word ajeeb to describe it, meaning strange, odd or peculiar, a word often followed in popular culture by dastaan, meaning story or saga.

“Ajeeb dastaan hai yeh,” Lata Mangeshkar sang, in 1960 and forever afterwards. “Kahaan shuru, kahaan khatam?

What a strange tale this is; who knows where it began, where it ends?

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Sarfaraz was still on 0 when he tried to sweep a legbreak from Rehan Ahmed that turned sharply past his outside edge. When the third umpire checked if Sarfaraz had dragged his back foot out of the crease, Jadeja went to him again.

“He was just telling me that when anyone does something new, they’re bound to fret over what’s happening, what’s not happening, will I be able to play, [or] will I get out,” Sarfaraz said. “There’s bound to be some nervousness. When I played that first sweep shot and the ball turned, he just told me I would be able to figure things out for myself if I spent a bit of time at the ground. That’s what I tried to do, and the runs started to come.”

Sarfaraz’s anxiety gave way, in due course, to a feeling that he had been here before, and done what needed to be done.

“You don’t get these crowds in first-class cricket; you don’t get that many international players,” he said. “Once you go in and begin to understand what’s happening, things begin to feel normal slowly. Initially I was feeling a little awkward – for the first one or two overs – but after that I just started to feel [that] I’ve played cricket for so many years, and I began to just play, and do what I’ve been doing for all these years.”

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This has been a strange series for India’s batters. They have looked, for most part, untroubled by England’s spin attack, but they have fallen multiple times to attacking shots that haven’t quite come off, leaving starts unconverted, leaving scorable runs unscored. Sarfaraz walked in after a double-century stand, but it was also the first century stand by an India pair in this series.

Over the course of this strange series, an unusually inexperienced India line-up has only rarely batted in the effortlessly dominant manner of past India line-ups facing visiting spinners on flat or flattish pitches. Sarfaraz came into this line-up with a reputation of toying with spinners, and England met this reputation head-on, bringing their fielders in off the boundary, and challenging him to play his shots.

“I’ve been doing these things for so long,” Sarfaraz later said. “The fielders were up – I had a chance and they had a chance too. They knew I was new and if I made one mistake they could have a wicket. I had an opportunity because they had brought the field up, and I play the spinners very well – that was my main point. Whenever I got a loose ball, I played bindaas, with just one plan in my mind.”

Bindaas. Carefree. When Joe Root enticed Sarfaraz with a ring of three square legs, Sarfaraz took on the invitation. He swept Root behind square, square, and in front of square – in the air and along the ground – off the outside half of his bat and straight out of the sweet spot, for four fours in four overs. When Tom Hartley overpitched, Sarfaraz drove him back over his head three times: twice for four, and once for six.

Sarfaraz was taking chances that may not have all come off on another day, but in between were other signs of his immense skill against spin – most of all his use of the full depth of the crease: to attack, defend, create space, and manipulate angles.

Perhaps the defining shot of his innings wasn’t a boundary, but his first single, when he met a shortish Rehan legbreak a long way outside off stump and sent it rolling through backward square leg with a flamboyant turn of his wrists. Or was it that late, one-handed chop off James Anderson, a mirror-image of a shot you might imagine coming off Rishabh Pant’s bat?

This was cheeky. This was exhilarating. This was, it seemed, a one-of-a-kind talent rushing towards its destiny.

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Jadeja was on 84 when Sarfaraz walked in. He was on 96 when Sarfaraz brought up his fifty, off 48 balls. When Jadeja was on 99, Sarfaraz was on 62.

Then came one of those moments that have defined Jadeja’s career almost as much as his bat-twirls and his pitch-leg, hit-off miracle balls. You might remember what happened in the Tendulkar 175 game, all those years ago, and how Hardik Pandya’s innings in that Champions Trophy final ended. You certainly remember what happened twice in Hyderabad two weeks ago. Apart from everything else it has been, Jadeja’s career has been a litany of lamentable mix-ups.

It had been threatening to happen all day, during his partnerships with both Rohit and Sarfaraz. Jadeja has this way of playing a shot and scurrying down the pitch whether he means to take a single or not. By the time he’s decided not to, his partner is often well out of his crease.

In this way ended a debut innings for the ages. Sarfaraz looked back once at Jadeja, then turned away and walked off. Who knows what he felt then.

“Sometimes there can be a bit of miscommunication – it’s part of the game,” he later said. “Sometimes you get run-out, sometimes you don’t – these things keep happening.”

It was okay, because he had lived a dream.

“It was abbu‘s dream first that he would play for India,” Sarfaraz said. “Unfortunately, that didn’t happen for a few reasons. Things weren’t [financially] that strong at home at that time. Then he thought he would focus on his children, and he worked hard on me, and he’s doing the same with my brother [the India Under-19 allrounder Musheer Khan]. This was the proudest moment of my life.”