It is said of players in the middle of a rich vein of form that they have hit a purple patch. Sarfaraz Khan, it must be said, has hit a purple band.

The stocky Mumbai batsman has been the talk of the Ranji Trophy season. With three big hundreds, including a monumental 275 in the league stage, he came into the final against Madhya Pradesh with 803 runs to his name. At the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Thursday, on Day Two of the title clash, he swelled that tally to 937, a fourth ton in his last six first-class games perhaps the most significant of the lot.