Star Indian batter Abhishek Sharma is 87 runs away from breaking Virat Kohli’s nine-year-old record of scoring the most T20 runs in a calendar year. The latter set the T20 benchmark in 2016 with 1,614 runs from 31 games at a stunning average of 89.66, featuring four hundreds and 14 half-centuries.
Abhishek now sits just 87 runs shy of eclipsing that record.
This year, he has scored 1,533 runs in 39 T20s at an average of 41.43, including three hundreds and nine fifties. Abhishek is all set to play next on Sunday, December 14, at the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium in Dharamsala, in the third T20I against South Africa.
Abhishek’s showing in the ongoing India vs South Africa T20I series has been a blend of brilliance and inconsistency.
In the first T20I at Cuttack, he was dismissed cheaply as India posted 175/6, winning the game by 101 runs.
In the second T20I at New Chandigarh, Abhishek opened the innings once more but scored just 17 runs off eight deliveries, smacking two sixes, one of which took him past 50 sixes in a calendar year for T20Is, joining an elite group of Indian power hitters.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for a struggling Shubman Gill, who may get just three games against South Africa to prove his worth before the Indian team management shifts to a ‘Plan B’ ahead of the T20 World Cup, all set to start in six weeks.
As India prepare for the third T20I against South Africa on Sunday, December 14, in sub-10°C conditions amidst the snow-capped Dhauladhar range, tensions are rising in the dressing room, with skipper Suryakumar Yadav’s prolonged poor form coming under scrutiny.
Worse, his deputy Shubman Gill, who was pushed into the XI at the expense of a settled Sanju Samson, isn’t inspiring much confidence.
The South African pace attack, led by Anrich Nortje, Marco Jansen, Lungi Ngidi, Ottniel Baartman, and Lutho Sipamla, has demonstrated how to exploit Indian conditions and the HPCA Stadium track, with its extra bounce and slight movement, promises to keep them dangerous.
