The risks associated with Abhishek Sharma are part of the package. A four-ball duck? Comes with the territory. Three sixes to reach a hundred the next day? Also the territory. Eight dots in the first 20 balls? Perhaps a sign of his expanding range.
Abhishek earned his spot in India’s T20I side after an explosive IPL 2024, where he scored 484 runs with a strike rate of 204. This included 42 sixes in 16 innings and 78 boundaries from 237 balls, with none of his innings lasting more than 28 balls.
With Abhishek, you know what you’re getting. It’s either spectacular hitting or that dreaded miss. This dynamic is inherent to T20s, a format India is trying to adapt to, moving away from the conservatism that hindered previous generations.
The senior players who won the T20 World Cup recently had to endure a lot of hard work and failure before achieving success. The new youngsters, free of such baggage, still need to balance risk and reward effectively.
Abhishek’s test in Harare illustrated this well. The pitch was far from an IPL featherbed; he didn’t have support like Travis Head at the other end or Heinrich Klaasen waiting in the wings, and India was trailing 0-1 after failing to chase 116 in the first game.
While he launched the first legal ball he faced out of the ground, he couldn’t just keep swinging after Shubman Gill fell early. With Blessing Muzarabani and Tendai Chatara hitting hard lengths and extracting movement, Abhishek had to adapt.
He struggled initially but managed to survive by running hard and rotating the strike. An opportunity came when Luke Jongwe was brought into the attack in the eighth over, but Abhishek got a reprieve as Wellington Masakadza dropped a catch.
With newfound confidence, Abhishek continued. “After that [drop] I thought it was my day,” he said post-match. “I felt I should take a bit of responsibility,” he added, referring to his strategy of picking targets carefully. “Rutu[raj Gaikwad] suggested it was tough to hit the fast bowlers, so we had to be mindful. That advice made sense, so I avoided playing too many shots against Jongwe and just focused on rotating the strike. That helped a lot.”
When Sikandar Raza came on to bowl the ninth over, Abhishek seized the moment. Despite Raza’s tricky deliveries, Abhishek pulled off a swift shot and followed it up with another aggressive hit. He refrained from over-hitting, knowing India needed to balance aggression and control at 71 for 1 in 9.2 overs.
Abhishek didn’t have to wait long for another chance as Raza replaced himself with Dion Myers. A wide brought Abhishek on strike, and he capitalized, scoring 26 runs in five boundaries, hitting the ball to different areas, including a massive six.
Abhishek reached his hundred with three consecutive sixes, drawing comparisons to Rohit Sharma. “Sixer king?” he remarked, “You wouldn’t think so by looking at me. Special mention to my dad who always encouraged me to hit big shots since childhood.”
Reflecting on his innings, Abhishek said, “My mindset was like in the IPL and domestic cricket. It was about execution, which was better than yesterday. I calculated the risks and executed well today.”
Abhishek’s innings, where he accelerated from 41 off 30 to 100 off 47, marked the joint third-fastest T20I hundred for India. This performance, while exceptional, doesn’t set a fixed template for his batting. Future games might present different challenges without weak links in the opposition’s bowling. Zimbabwe dropped him twice, and he used DRS to stay in the game.
However, this innings showcased a batter adapting to conditions and situations without retreating into a shell, fulfilling India’s hopes for its future stars learning on the job.
