If Virender Sehwag were to arrive again in cricket, his style won’t be dissimilar to the disdain with which Abhishek Sharma treated Shaheen Shah Afridi on Sunday, albeit left-handed, former India batter Suresh Raina tells mid-day, a day after Suryakumar Yadav & Co’s six-wicket win in the Asia Cup Super 4s match at Dubai.
Abhishek hooked premium pacer Afridi for a six off the very first ball of the match — a shot that will stay fresh in the mind for ages, reminding Raina of his former teammate Sehwag. “Definitely, you can say that,” replied Raina when mid-day asked him if Abhishek seemed like it was Sehwag batting left-handed.
“I have seen Viru bhai [Sehwag] making double and triple hundreds. Players like that can change a game single-handedly. Abhishek is the new super star, No. 1 T20I batsman. His range of hitting is unbelievable,” added Raina, a prolific whiffle-ball player himself.
All fired up
A dropped catch while fielding at the boundary, followed by some heckling from the fans and a bit of needling by Haris Rauf, was enough to fire up the young India opener. And adding a bit more aggression to Abhishek’s batting was his Punjabi state-mate and opening partner, Shubman Gill.
Gill made 47 off 28 balls with eight fours, but it was Abhishek’s 39-ball 74, including five sixes and six fours.
Abhishek shot to fame while setting the Indian Premier League ablaze with his big hits for Sunrisers Hyderabad. He has so far played only 21 T20Is, scoring 708 runs at an average of 35.40 with a strike rate of 197.21, including two hundreds and three fifties. He is yet to play an ODI, but Raina is confident that the 25-year-old opener will not just play all three formats, but will excel too. “Every team has a couple of wicket-taking bowlers, but Abhishek’s game-sense can take them [bowlers] out of the equation. He has a sharp brain. I think he will master ODIs as well. He has some fine game awareness and knows exactly when to switch gears. He has a lot of trust in his hitting ability, but that hitting comes with a sense of poise. You will seldom see him getting carried away. Such players are all-format players,” said Raina.
It is well known that Abhishek has been mentored by Yuvraj Singh, who was in a similar mould — a big-hitting left-hander — but in the middle order. Raina said that Yuvraj’s role in making Abhishek mentally stronger will ensure he can play some long innings, leading to big hundreds.
The Yuvi effect
“Yuvi pa has strengthened the mental aspect of Abhishek’s game. When a big-hitting player gets his eye in, he becomes impossible to stop. Yuvi pa has brought that sense of poise in his batting. Big players like Yuvraj, [MS] Dhoni can tune their minds, but you learn that over the years. Abhishek is learning how to convert fifties into hundreds right now,” said Raina, 38, who retired in 2020, after playing 18 Tests, 226 ODIs and 78 T20Is, accumulating 768, 5615 and 1605 runs respectively.
The 2011 World Cup-winner also believes that Abhishek’s left-arm spin will be a handy addition to India’s ODI set-up. “Yuvi Pa, Viru bhai, Sachin [Tendulkar] paaji, Yusuf [Pathan], and I, all of us used to bowl [spin] a few overs. Abhishek can fill that gap in our ODI set-up. Even if he manages to deliver four overs, it gives the captain the option to maneuver his bowlers and utilise them more efficiently,” said Raina, adding that the opening left-right combo is another added advantage. “We have seen left-right opening combinations of Viru and Gauti bhai [Gautam Gambhir], Viru and Dada [Sourav Ganguly], Dada and Sachin. And now we have Abhishek and Shubman Gill. [India’s current head coach] Gauti bhai was himself a left-handed opener, so he will know how important that slot is,” concluded Raina.
