At Lord's in 1978 he took 5/39 to reduce England to 119/7, dismissing Mike Brearley, Graham Gooch, David Gower, Ian Botham and Bob Taylor, but rain ruined play and the match was drawn.
[9] Sarfraz's greatest bowling performance took place in the First Test at Melbourne on 15 March 1979 when Australia were 305/3 with Allan Border (105) and Kim Hughes (84) at the crease needing only 77 runs to win.
Earlier in the match the Australian tailender Rodney Hogg had been run out while 'gardening' and Alan Hurst controversially ran out Sikander Bakht when backing up, two pieces of gamesmanship which caused bad feeling between the teams.
Sarfraz played for Northamptonshire in two separate spells and in the 1980 Benson and Hedges Cup Final he took 3/23 off 11 overs to restrict Essex to 203/8 in Northant's six run win.
When Pakistan were reduced to 181/8 Sarfraz made 90, his highest Test and first-class score, adding 161 for the ninth wicket with his captain Zaheer Abbas (82 not out) to give his team a 102 run lead.
[15] Being 6’6'’ tall,[16] Sarfraz was described "as strong as a cart-horse" and his powerful upper body and good action allowed him to bowl at a fast-medium pace.
[7] The flat wickets found in Pakistan were not ideal for a bowler of his pace, but could sometimes surprise batsmen with his ability to make to ball seam, swing or bounce awkwardly.
He passed on his knowledge to Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, who made this new type of bowling famous in the late 1980s and 1990s.
When Bob Woolmer was found dead in Jamaica, Sarfraz was quick to suggest that he was murdered, even before the postmortem, linking it to corruption in cricket.
He subsequently raised concerns about the safety of Pakistani cricketers in West Indies, claiming Woolmer and Inzamam Ul Haq were getting threats from the bookies without naming his sources.