Alishan Sharafu: The karate kid who chose cricket and conquered the Black Caps

A decade later, he doesn’t rue the road not taken. Three years after turning out for the junior side, he transitioned to the senior team and became a regular fixture with his daring batting. The 23-year-old acquainted the Black Caps with his carefree spirit. He glided down the pitch to Matt Henry, one of the most fearsome fast bowlers around. The good-length ball clocked 90mph or thereabouts, but his movements were so precise that he was in the perfect position to loft it over the mid-off fielder’s head for four. Henry’s incensed response was a red-hot short ball spearing into his body, but Sharafu simply transferred his weight onto the back foot and uncorked a savage pull. The stroke felt like a slap in Henry’s face.

Rather like a rising punch in karate. He holds a blue belt in the martial art, though he has almost forgotten it. “Oh, it was a long, long time ago—I don’t even remember,” he said. He was around 10 when his father, who works in the IT industry, enrolled him at a karate academy. But then his father decided to teach him cricket, the sport he loved and played but couldn’t pursue seriously due to non-existent infrastructure in his village, Ramanthali, tucked in the football-crazy district of Kannur in Kerala. “I used to bowl at him in the backyard of our apartment in Sharjah. He showed good hand-eye coordination. I would bowl faster, but he still looked comfortable and got behind the ball nicely. I got a gut feeling that he would perform well in cricket,” his father, TK Sharafudhin, told Mathrubhumi daily. “He has made a lot of sacrifices for me, like taking me back and forth to the academy and all that traveling,” Sharafu said.

But in Dubai, his father couldn’t find a decent academy to nourish his son’s sporting gifts. Then he ran into Obaid Hameed, a former UAE international who took up coaching when he was only 22. Hameed found an instant spark in his new student and groomed him into a batsman with sturdy technique.

Soon, Sharafu was breaking records for fun in school. A hundred in an Abu Dhabi T10 game brought him into national attention. He then hammered 155 from 83 balls in an age-group game, breaking his own record for the highest individual score in the junior circuit. Among those he impressed was UAE coach Robin Singh. The two soon started interacting, and Singh advised him to rein in his aggression slightly and try to bat throughout the innings. “He told me to play my natural game and play the shots, but at the same time look to bat the entire innings,” Sharafu recalled.

In Chennai, too, he was careful not to squander his wicket after the initial flurry of fours. For 14 balls, he pulled the shutters down on his boundary strokes and traded in singles and twos. Then, like a clap of thunder from clear skies, he carved Mitchell Santner inside-out over extra cover—a stroke that requires power, precision, and placement. Jimmy Neesham was dealt with in similar fashion. But the most breathtaking shots were reserved for the fastest among the New Zealand pack, Lockie Ferguson. After scything a low full-toss through the third-man fence, he uncorked an uppercut, bending like a trebuchet to upper-cut him over third man. Henry felt the brunt of his bat too, as Sharafu sledgehammered a slower ball cutter over deep mid-wicket and winked upon reaching his half-century. He perished soon after, but not before laying the platform for a competitive total. He whispered a silent prayer.

His only pang was that his parents weren’t in the stands. They didn’t fly to Chennai because his younger brother had to sit for board exams. But Sharafu passed a big test in his career too: scoring a half-century in a World Cup against one of the toughest sides in the world, New Zealand, just a night’s train journey away from his hometown.