Having missed the first three overs of the Netherlands’s chase on Wednesday night, Abhishek Sharma was stationed at a wide slip when Jasprit Bumrah walk-ran in to kick off the fourth over here. Max O’Dowd, the tall opener who had no clue what was flying out of Bumrah’s right hand, essayed an optimistic drive to a length ball that snaked away and caught his outside edge. Abhishek went flying to his left, two-handed, and got a nice piece of the ball in his palms, but the white orb somehow slipped out of his grasp and clanged onto the turf.
As the camera unforgivingly focussed on him, Abhishek buried his face in the same palms that had just let him down. A melange of emotions must have been flooding through his troubled mind; after all, when it rains, it truly pours.
The left-handed opener came into the T20 World Cup as India’s chief enforcer. With a strike-rate hovering close to 200 and a wonderfully uncluttered game and mind as his ally, Abhishek had rapidly scaled the ladder to become the No. 1 T20I batter in the world. Teams quivered at the prospect of having to bowl to him first up, because they had seen and experienced the carnage he was capable of.
Three innings and eight deliveries into the World Cup, Abhishek is still searching for his first runs. The clanger off O’Dowd was the latest — he will be hoping the last — in a series of misadventures that is bound to have a massive impact on him mentally, but which he must quickly put behind him with the business end of the tournament approaching.
A first-baller against USA in Mumbai, a night in the hospital to address a stomach infection, and two outs to off-spin against Pakistan and Netherlands, paint the perfect picture of a tale of woe and misfortune. A hat-trick of ducks in the last fortnight, and five blobs in seven T20I hits in 2026, must be difficult to deal with, but Abhishek, 25, is fortunate to be surrounded by love and undisputed backing.
If there is one thing he must guard against, it should be the tendency to overthink and beat himself up too much. There’s nothing he can do to remedy the past, but a new phase beckons from Sunday. Abhishek can still make the Super Eights his stage because class will out, and the young man is nothing if not pure class.
173.91
Abhishek Sharma’s strike-rate in T20Is vs SA; the left-hander has amassed 200 runs off 115 balls
