Abhishek Sharma shone with a stunning knock in a Punjab Inter-District Senior match. He smashed 233 runs off 91 balls with the help of 15 fours and 25 sixes.
It had a strike rate of 256.04. The southpaw played the innings for his Amritsar senior team against Tarn Taran. His sensational knock has come at a time when he is going through a lean patch in international cricket. Pictures of the scorecard, as well as Abhishek’s batting, are going viral on social media.
Abhishek’s team ended up scoring 533 for 8 in the stipulated 50 overs.
The ICC’s No. 3-ranked T20I batter, who began the year at No. 1, returned from Zimbabwe with 11 runs in three innings at an average of 3.66. That is not an isolated failure. It is the latest chapter in a slump that has stretched for months.
Against England, he scored 131 runs in five T20Is at an average of 26.2. Against Ireland, he managed 49 runs in two matches at an average of 24.5. Across his last 10 T20I innings, there has been just one fifty.
More worrying than the runs is the manner of the dismissals.
Blessing Muzarabani dismissed him in all three games against Zimbabwe.
The first time, Abhishek threw his hands at a wide delivery and sliced a simple catch into the deep.
The second time, he poked at a rising ball and chipped it straight to backward point.
The third time, he tried to manufacture room against the angle, edged behind and walked off shaking his head.
These were three different shots, but the same mistake. He never looked in control against pace outside off stump.
This was Zimbabwe, not Australia or South Africa. If this series was designed as a confidence-builder, it achieved the opposite for Abhishek.
Zimbabwe had clearly done their homework. They began with Sikandar Raza’s off-spin, the same type of bowling that exposed Abhishek repeatedly during the T20 World Cup. Once he survived that examination, Muzarabani finished the job with pace.
The decline is evident in the numbers too.
Before the T20 World Cup, Abhishek averaged 37.05 with a strike rate close to 195. Since then, his average has crashed to 19.4, while his strike rate has dipped to 165.
He looks like a batter caught between two minds. The aggression that made him dangerous has faded, but the consistency needed to justify the change hasn’t arrived.