Sarfraz Nawaz in Figures

Martin Chandler | 9:42am BST 31 May 2026

Published: 2026
Pages: 132
Author: Tufail, Muhammad Abid
Publisher: Jumbo Publishing
Rating: 3.5 stars

It is almost twenty years now since the old ACS Famous Cricketers series reached its centenary, and then promptly ended. It had been superseded by the Lives in Cricket series, biographies of, generally, lesser known figures than had been the subjects of the Famous Cricketers series.

The Famous Cricketers booklets do have some narrative content, each having a short introduction and a paragraph or two in relation to each season of the subject’s career. But essentially they are a collection of statistical records and the briefest of summaries of the subject’s contribution to each match in which he played.

The formula is one that Muhammad Abid Tufail has dusted off for this, his first book. His relatively lengthy introduction is in part a short summary of Sarfraz’s career, the more detailed part being to explain the leading role that Sarfraz played in the development of reverse swing.

With the greatest of respect to the iconic series of ACS booklets Tufail’s contribution to the genre is certainly an upgrade. The paper is of better quality, there are more photographs and the way the book is set out is easier on the eye and in addition it does not skimp on its coverage of the’contributions Sarfraz made to the limited overs formats in which he appeared.

I may be wrong but have always assumed that a large part of the reason for the discontinuance of the original series was the increasing ease of access to statistics online. You can’t argue with volume of sales of course, but whilst Cricketarchive is a wonderful resource it is now behind a paywall, and even as a subscriber I would not know where to begin with generating some of the lists that these books contain.

So if you want to know anything about the cricket career of Sarfraz Nawaz this is certainly the place to look. All his match winning contributions, and there were a number of those, are faithfully recorded and commented on as, of course, are those games where he contributed very little. All the important cumulative and season by season stats are present, and more lists than you shake a cricket bat at.

But I’d still like to read a full biography of Sarfraz, particularly if he was prepared to co-operate with the project. A man of firm views he has been no stranger to controversy in his later years so perhaps that could be Tufail’s next project. That said as an alternative the only Pakistani who featured in the Famous Cricketers series was Hanif Mohammad, so there remains plenty of scope for a whole series of successor volumes to Sarfraz Nawaz in Figures.

Published in Pakistan I don’t suppose this is going to be an easy book to find, but do know that currently there are a few copies to be had from David Battersby who can be contacted via battersby156@hotmail.com