NEW DELHI: If you were seated on the second tier here at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Thursday evening, the white Kookaburra ball would have seemed to be perpetually flying in your eyeline for the first 10 overs of the third T20I between India and Afghanistan. It was Abhishek Sharma who was bringing a dead rubber to life just the way Indian T20 batters are used to doing in home conditions and the IPL.Such are the standards set by Abhishek over the last three years that bringing up his hundred off 30 balls felt like just another day in the office. As one was still coming to terms with the carnage he inflicted, Abhishek decided to celebrate his century by calmly sitting in the middle of the pitch, meditating like a monk.Having endured a comparatively modest year with the bat in international cricket, Abhishek’s relentless hitting was kind of a throwback to his marauding run with the Indian team before the T20 World Cup in March.Abhishek’s onslaught on a tired pitch made his opening partner Sanju Samson‘s 35-ball 50 look like a laborious effort. That one knock of 108 off 34 balls, which ended in the 10th over, was enough for India to post 221/7 after Abhishek left the park with the scoreboard reading 142/1.The 11 sixes and nine boundaries off Abhishek’s bat were enough to break the spirits of the Afghanistan team. Afghanistan’s batting folded for 94 in just [missing number] overs to lose by 127 runs, bringing their first ‘home’ series against India to an end with a 3-0 scoreline in favour of India.The Afghan players clearly lacked energy on the field, having endured heavy poundings in the first two T20Is here this week. It appeared they almost waited for this game to just pass by. But Abhishek wasn’t satiated despite his two whirlwind knocks in the previous two matches.As the Afghan players looked like merely rolling their arms over and tossing the ball without any intent, Abhishek was amusing himself by testing the catching skills of the spectators in the stands.Abhishek’s returns in international cricket haven’t been the best since the T20I World Cup in March. The runs have come at a premium for him. He wasn’t going to let this opportunity go to waste in re-establishing himself as India’s undisputed first-choice opener in T20Is even as the buzz around 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi only keeps growing. He finished the series with 209 runs off 85 balls.
Reddy’s bowling gives confidence
Nitish Kumar Reddy is the pet project for the team management to get him ready as a premier seam-bowling allrounder besides the injury-prone Hardik Pandya. On Thursday, he managed just one off four balls with the bat in his only outing in the series.Captain Shreyas Iyer chose to give him the new ball like Pandya has been doing in T20 cricket for India. The first one didn’t look incisive, but Reddy came back later in the innings with a clear plan of varying the pace and length. He finished with figures of 3/25 in four overs.Having pulled him out of the Asian Games team, Reddy’s performance on Thursday night will give the team management a lot of confidence as they start preparing for the ODI World Cup with the ODI series against West Indies later this month.
