Ishan Kishan channelled his inner Rishabh Pant and sent the bat flying during the second T20I against New Zealand on Friday, January 23. Kishan came into bat with India in all sorts of trouble as they lost Sanju Samson in the very first over and then Abhishek Sharma in the very next over, while chasing 209 runs to win the match.
Kishan didn’t get off to the best of starts in the first match as he was dismissed for eight runs. He was out to make the most of his opportunity in the second match and started to attack the Blackcaps bowler. He took apart Zak Foulkes in the third over with 24 coming off it. The next over saw him take on Jacob Duffy and hit a couple more boundaries.
In the fifth over of the innings, Kishan was looking to attack Mitchell Santner and went for a big shot. But he lost grip of his bat and it went flying, with everyone getting flashbacks of Pant. The Indian wicketkeeper, who was an U-19 teammate of Kishan, is known to send the bat flying during matches, especially when he goes into overdrive.
Kishan goes bang! bang!
After a quick change of the bat and gloves, Kishan decided to kick into overdrive, hitting a hat-trick of boundaries against Mitchell Santner. This was followed by him taking down Matt Henry for a six and a couple of boundaries to get to his fifty in just 21 balls.
With this, he broke the record of Abhishek Sharma from the Nagpur T20I for the fastest fifty by an Indian against New Zealand in the format.
Fastest 50s for India vs New Zealand in T20Is
21 balls – Ishan Kishan, Raipur, 2026*
22 balls – Abhishek Sharma, Nagpur, 2026
23 balls – Rohit Sharma, Hamilton, 2020
23 balls – KL Rahul, Auckland, 2020
Kishan continued to go berserk and was finally dismissed for 76 off 32 balls in Raipur.
– Ends
