New Delhi, Sep 18 (IANS): Storms usually give some warning before arriving to leave a city’s weather cycle in a mess and leave people wondering when it really came, hit them hard and then vanish as if it never came in the first place. Similar scenes unfolded at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Thursday night.
Abhishek Sharma, taking strike for his first delivery of the night, had to push defensively to cover as Fazalhaq Farooqi got some good away shape. But on the very next ball, with fans around the Mohinder Amarnath stand chanting ‘Abhishek, Abhishek,’ Farooqi bowled a half-volley which had ‘hit me’ written all over, Abhishek brought out his signature loft over extra cover and the ‘India walle’ song from Happy New Year blared from the speakers at the stadium.
From there, for the next 50 minutes Afghanistan were caught in a storm and were literally blown away by the carnage unleashed by Abhishek. By the time he was out in the 10th over, Abhishek had made 108 off just 34 balls. He had hit 11 sixes and nine fours, reached the fastest men’s T20I hundred by an Indian batter, the quickest ton by a batter from a Full Member nation and put the game beyond Afghanistan’s reach.
The loud cheer at the toss hinted at what the 26,230 fans wanted. When Afghanistan captain Ibrahim Zadran chose to bowl, they roared as India had won the toss and fielded first in both earlier matches, and though they won the matches, the fans had been waiting to watch the world champions bat first with nothing to hold them back.
By the time, India’s innings ended at 221/7, despite making 79 runs in the final overs, the fans could not have asked for more. For all the talk of a dead rubber, the people who paid to be there got far more than their money’s worth, and most of it came from one bat – of Abhishek’s.
After a gentle opening over, Abhishek showed signs of hitting the fifth gear quickly. Azmatullah Omarzai was pulled over square leg for six and ‘Jai Ho’ song was played by the DJ. Suddenly the crowd began to chant, ‘Ek chakka aur maar (Hit one more six), and for a moment it felt like going back to the Salim Durani era, where the stylish batter would hit sixes on appeal from fans.
Abhishek then came down the pitch at Omarzai, the first time all night he charged a seamer and lifted him down the ground for four – going in the completely opposite direction of what the fans appealed to him. Their request, though, was fulfilled on the last ball of second over when Abhishek crunched Omarzai over deep cover for six, leaving the stands in a frenzy.
When Farooqi came back and pitched it up again, he was taken for two sixes and two fours. Holding the bat handle high, Abhishek’s strengths have been pretty simple – to hit seamers cleanly on both sides of the wicket with his eye-catchy bat-swing. Against spinners, he hangs back and brings out shots to be hit all over the park and at times, makes room to execute his shots. All of it was on show on Thursday.
Mohammad Nabi’s off-spin suffered the most as at the end of it, Abhishek had raced to 50 off just 16 balls. It was the sixth time he had reached a T20I fifty inside 20 deliveries. His mentor Yuvraj Singh, Colin Munro, Finn Allen, Dasun Shanaka and Adil Butt have done it three times each.
It was also the fifth time Abhishek got to fifty inside the powerplay, which no other batter from a Full Member side has done more than twice. Afghanistan then did something they rarely do – bring in Rashid Khan inside the first six overs. Abhishek hit him for two fours, then came down the track and hit a straight six off him, as he had in each of the three matches.
It was his seventh six in the power-play (and 37 in all in T20Is this year, again a record in men’s T20Is), and it took India to exactly a century of runs in power-play, their highest six-over score in T20Is and the joint fifth-highest in the format.
It was the fourth time India had gone past 90 in the powerplay, and each time Abhishek had led the way – in Mumbai, Guwahati, and the T20 World Cup final in Ahmedabad. His own power-play contribution was 76 not out off 22 balls, the highest by any batter at the end of a T20I powerplay on record.
Even after the fielding restrictions ended, Afghanistan could not find a way to stop Abhishek. Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Abdullah Ahmadzai paid for small errors, as the others had. Abhishek went from fifty to a hundred in only 14 balls and amassed 51 runs along the way.
He reached three figures with a single in the ninth over – no batter had ever got to a men’s T20I hundred earlier in an innings. The previous best mark was also his, 10.1 overs against England at the Wankhede last year and bettered what Rohit Sharma had done before – a 35-ball ton against Sri Lanka in 2017.
Amidst the crowd rising to applaud an unforgettable blitzkrieg, which included his father Rajkumar Sharma beaming with pride and being congratulated by spectators in the hospitality stand, Abhishek looked puzzled. He turned to Sanju Samson, who later hit a 35-ball fifty, to ask what was going on, and Samson had to tell him he had just reached his hundred. After all that noise, his celebration was completely still.
After holding his helmet and bat aloft, Abhishek did not leap or punch the air. He took off his helmet, sat down on the turf and settled into a meditative pose with his eyes closed and chanted ‘Om Namah Shivaye’.
Though it left a few people laughing over the latest entry into unique milestone celebrations in cricket, including head coach Gautam Gambhir and rest of the Indian team having a smile, that was just a glimpse into what Abhishek’s mindset was – absolutely in zen mode and blowing away the hapless Afghanistan bowlers.
The end came in the 10th over, when he tried to hit a Rashid googly out of the ground and edged it to Rahmanullah Gurbaz behind the stumps. Abhishek had made 108 off just 34 balls at a strike rate of 317, while the rest of India’s batters managed 112 off 86 balls at 127. Of his 108 runs, 102 came from boundaries – which translates to 94.44 per cent, the highest share of boundary runs in any men’s T20I hundred.
Apart from notching up his third T20I century, it was Abhishek’s 10th hundred in all T20 cricket, level with Virat Kohli for the most by an Indian men’s batter. The boundary-hitting carnage meant more because of what happened with Abhishek before coming to New Delhi for the series.
At the T20 World Cup he made 141 runs – a mixture of three ducks (and being messed up by stomach infection), before hitting fifties in must-win clashes, including the final. Though he got 563 runs in IPL 2026 for Sunrisers Hyderabad, the fight for places at the top of the order for India was getting tighter via Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s entry.
Against Zimbabwe in July, Abhishek made 1, 8 and 2. Suddenly, the murmurs over him retaining his spot in the playing eleven rose. When Abhishek is in form, doubt does not seem to stay with him. But when he is not, that harshness with himself is visible. His technique for T20 cricket, though, was never the problem. A quick fifty in the series opener on Sunday suggested the good old Abhishek was coming back and Thursday’s game settled the debate.
The rest of India’s innings was quieter – just like the calm after the storm. But the damage caused by Abhishek, especially in the powerplay, made the result a foregone conclusion. “Look, I’ll tell and want to say one thing. It’s not about the hundred that he scored here. I can sit here and keep talking about his 100. But it’s just the impact.
“The only thing that we talk about in that dressing room is about how much impact we can create with the bat and how much impact we can create with the ball and that has been our ideology and philosophy since the last two years. T20 cricket is not about runs or wickets. It’s about how much impact you can create and for both Sanju and Abhishek, I think you can easily sit here and say one got a 50 and the other one got a 100.
“But for me, I think the biggest positive was when we got a 100 in the power-play – that we have never done in my coaching tenure. So I think that was a very clear message that if you’re going hard, just keep going hard,” said Gambhir in the post-game press conference.
Gambhir would also suggest that hitting 300 in a T20I is the next target then for his marauding batters. “That is what the message and that is exactly the message that’s going to be in future as well that we still haven’t reached 300.
“So that’s probably the next target because the kind of talent we have in that dressing room, we should be doing some incredible things. So we still have a lot to achieve,” he added. On Thursday, as he brought out a storm of sheer six-hitting in New Delhi, Abhishek showed it may not be far away.
