Abhishek Sharma shows he’s here to stay with six-hitting exhibition at Eden

When BCCI announced India’s squad for the T20Is against England earlier this month, the burning question was whether Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal were rested or had been dropped. 

The truth is, we still do not know if Gill and Jaiswal have been rested for this series or dropped. 

But what we do know is this: Abhishek Sharma, the incumbent, is doing everything in his power to make the opening spot his own. 

12 innings into his T20I career, Abhishek now already has three 50-plus scores with a strike rate over 200. To put that into context, that’s already one more than what Virat Kohli managed in his entire career and just one fewer than Rohit Sharma, who has 151 T20I innings under his belt. 

In fact, as of this moment, Rohit is the only Indian opener in T20I history to have posted more 50+ scores at a strike rate over 200 than Abhishek.

For a brief while, there had been fears if Abhishek was just a flash in the pan. He began his T20I career with a hundred in his very second game but then went seven innings without a score over 20. His T20I average after nine innings read 18.88 and this was despite a century in one of the matches. 

But those fears have well and truly been squashed now. Abhishek now has played back-to-back-to-back impactful knocks and is now starting to look the part. Slowly, he is starting to show why he is very much worth the investment and why India should persist with him even if there might be a temptation to draft-in a far more ‘secure’ batter. 

Admittedly, in the first T20I at the Eden Gardens today, Abhishek was under no pressure when he walked out to bat. England had been bamboozled by spin, and so all India needed was 133 on a pretty decent track, with the help of dew, no less.

Yet even in a contest that was already a write-off when he walked out to bat, the 24-year-old put in an electrifying showing that managed to get plenty of people to buy into his potential.

***

34 balls was all Abhishek spent in the middle, yet he slaughtered the England bowlers, hammering as many as eight sixes. 

To put the carnage he inflicted into context, this was the first-ever instance of an Indian batter smashing 8+ sixes in an inning in T20Is having faced fewer than 40 balls. And there have only been two other instances of a non-hundred from an Indian batter featuring as many sixes: Rohit’s 92 against Australia in the T20 World Cup last year and KL Rahul’s 89 against Sri Lanka in Indore in 2017.

On the night, Abhishek hit more sixes against Adil Rashid's leg-spin than any other bowler (3)—this does not come as a surprise, for spin-bashing has always been his forte. 

Yet on a track where there was enough juice for the quicks, and against an England pace stacked with tearaway quicks, the left-hander blasted 49 runs off 21 runs against the faster bowlers, plundering five sixes in total.

Abhishek unfurled his full range against the quicks, not just bringing out the pull and the flick but even making room and masterfully implementing the cut shot. One such inch-perfect cut, off Jofra Archer in the third over of the chase, turned out to be one of the shots of the game.

Yet the highlight of Abhishek’s knock, without question, was the way he treated Mark Wood with disdain.

Heading into the game, the jury was still out on the left-hander’s effectiveness against raw pace. And Wood, fresh off a four-month break, started his spell bowling absolute rockets. But across a four-ball stretch in the sixth over of the second innings, the left-hander left the tearaway quick puzzled and short of answers through an exhibition of T20 batting. 

The first ball of the over was 152.8 kph, but the line was awry - well down leg - and Abhishek nonchalantly flicked it for six over fine leg. Wood was quick to correct his line, but this time, the left-hander carved the 150.4 kph rocket over point, using the pace of the ball to make it two maximums in as many balls. 

The next ball was a dot, but on the fourth ball, Abhishek humiliated Wood and asserted his authority by taking a fiery drive straight over the bowler’s head. Abhishek only faced one more Wood delivery in the innings; he ended the game with a strike rate of 340 against the veteran pacer.

A run of games like Abhishek has had - 50 (25), 36 (18), 79 (34) - would have guaranteed him an extended run in any other country in the world, but the competition in India is such that he’ll likely need to keep up this form for the remainder of this series to keep his spot. Even that might not be enough considering the calibre of players sitting out, who are generational talents in their own right.

What the future holds for Abhishek, then, is anybody’s guess. But if he can continue to stay in the present, and if he can continue to produce one masterclass after another like he’s been doing, what can possibly stop him from achieving greatness, something he seems destined for?