Abhishek Sharma reveals his weakness ahead of T20 World Cup 2026 - Blow for India?

Abhishek Sharma was named the Player of the Match for playing another match-winning knock. On January 21, the young opener set Team India up for a 48-run win over New Zealand in the first of the five-match T20I series. Sharma’s 84 off 35 helped the hosts to register 238/7, batting first. After the match, despite knowing his credibility and heroics, he did during the match, the 25-year-old chose to remain humble as he mentioned, “I don't have a lot of shots.”

Before the match, the cricket experts from the pitch side informed us that there were a lot of cracks under the layer of thin grass. They were expecting to see a low-scoring contest in Nagpur. In reality, it was raining sixes and fours at the VCA Stadium, mostly because of Abhishek Sharma. Before hitting his first boundary of the match, the Indian opener had put the ball four times into the gallery for maximums.

Abishek Sharma’s stormy innings in Nagpur

After losing the toss, India went to bat first and lost Sanju Samson and Ishan Kishan in a short interval. While another possibility for a batting collapse was looming on the horizon, the partnership between captain Suryakumar Yadav and Abhishek Sharma provided the team with some much-needed stability in the middle. Yadav, who was out of runs for a significant amount of time, added runs in a watchful manner. On the other end, Sharma was dealing with big shots mostly.

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During the 35-ball innings, the emerging opener slammed eight 6s and five blazing 4s, which took his strike rate to 240.00. He touched the half-century mark in 22 balls. When Ish Sodhi dismissed him with the help of Kyle Jamieson’s safe pair of hands, Sharma scored 84 in 35, and India was on 149/4 in 12 overs.

Abhishek Sharma reveals how he prepared for the IND vs NZ 1st T20I match

Ahead of the T20I contest, Abhishek Sharma did not get enough time for preparations, as he had to participate in domestic games. Still, he backed his natural game and managed to deliver again for a winning cause. During the match after the presentation ceremony, the southpaw said that videos of opposition bowlers and his own batting highlights helped him a lot with his preparations.

“If you watch videos of bowlers or if you watch your batting videos as well, you get an idea of where the bowler is planning to bowl to you or maybe where I'm going to play my shots,” Sharma said at the presentation ceremony.

“But it's always about me backing my shots because I don't have a lot of shots. It's just a few shots. I'm going to practise a lot and just execute it.”

I'm not that strong a kind of guy: Abhishek Sharma

After the match, Abhishek Sharma claimed that he is not among the strongest batters on the field but still managed to hit those over boundaries purely because of timing and awareness.

“I feel I'm more of a timing batter. So, for me, I have to just watch the ball and get used to the conditions because we are playing all over India right now, and so I have to adapt to the conditions very quickly,” he added.

Also Read: Sanju Samson finally speaks out on Rahul Dravid ignoring him at T20 World Cup 2024