Homecoming cooled off

In 2015, he became the youngest player (17) to play in the Indian Premier League. A name in the Mumbai cricketing circles was growing to be a future star in Indian Cricket. It was Sarfaraz Khan was who scored 439 runs for Rizvi Springfield in a Harris Shield match when he was 12. After his IPL debut for Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) what followed was his departure to Uttar Pradesh for domestic cricket.

Three years later, a lad born and bred in the streets of Kurla made up his mind. On Monday, the RCB batsman made his return to the city after filing papers with Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA).

However, there stands a wall between him and Mumbai cricket- cooling off period. A rule wherein a player moves to play for another association and later decides to return to MCA then he has to serve a cooling-off period of a year. In that year, the player can compete in club level matches but he is not allowed to play domestic cricket with MCA for the forthcoming season.

After he quit Mumbai to join UP from the 2015-16 season, the endowed batsman featured in just eight games owing to an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury.

Kiran More may have mocked this rule earlier by asking, “do players sit in the AC?” but it stands. Young cricketers look forward to the Ranji Trophy matches to grab the selector’s eyeballs. At 20, Sarfaraz will turn his head to club cricket for the same.

His father, Naushad Khan who is also the batsman’s coach confesses that it was his decision to send him to UPCA. “He was not mature enough then. I made that decision for him but the return is his own decision. He was even getting a job at Indian Navy but he wanted to come back home,” says Naushad after leaving a letter with MCA.

Asked whether he will appeal the cooling-off period to MCA, Naushad says it’s the Cricket Improvement Committee’s (CIC) decision. “Like I told you, Sarfaraz was a minor then. But I don’t want to appeal to MCA or CIC. If they feel that he should return, they can call him. For now, I want to train him in a way that it will help him for the rest of his career,” he says.

Names in the likes of Iqbal Abdulla and Harmeet Singh are still struggling to return to the Mumbai team after respective stints with Kerala, and Jammu and Kashmir. Both of them could not settle in the other teams which made them return home. The Mumbai outfit was toiling in the spin department and could use either Abdulla or Singh for their left-arm spin variation.

“You can play a year of club cricket but even then you never know when the selector is watching. All you can do is wait for a year,” says a source who has served the period.  

Even this year, both of them have missed the list of probable players for the senior team after serving the cooling-off period.

There was even a buzz contemplating the rule but MCA secretary Unmesh Khanvilkar told Asian Age that the cooling-off period stands for all the players who return after stints with other clubs. “For now, the rule remains for all the players and it will not change for anyone,” says Khanvilkar.

The similarity between Abdulla, Singh, and Sarfaraz is that all of them have or are serving the cooling period but the latter has time on him. On top of it, Virat bhai (Kohli) as he calls him and RCB have both placed enough trust in him in their own ways.

Virat has groomed him in his own ways and the Bangalore franchise retained the batsman for 5-crore before the 2018 season began. It will still be a year until we will probably see him in the Mumbai jersey but you can always watch out when he plays for Payyade.