Abhishek Sharma is on a serious rampage towards an elite milestone in Indian cricket history. The young hitter is edging closer to Virat Kohli’s illustrious record of being the Indian player with the most runs scored in a single calendar year across T20 cricket. At present, just 87 runs separate Sharma from achieving this historical feat, and his stellar form suggests he could eclipse it very soon in the upcoming matches.
Kohli set this mark during his powerful 2016 season, when he scored a mind-boggling 1,614 runs across 31 matches. The former Indian captain’s performance in that year was nothing short of a miracle, as he averaged 89.66 with four hundreds and 14 fifties to his credit.
Abhishek Sharma is chasing Virat Kohli’s all-time T20 record
Abhishek Sharma is very close to being considered alongside Virat Kohli as one of the greatest Indian cricket players of all time. The flashy left-handed batsman just needs 87 more runs to break the record of 1,614 runs set by Kohli in T20s in 2016. Sharma’s total for the year so far is very impressive—he has scored 1,533 runs in 39 matches at a good average of 41.43, with three centuries and nine fifties.
His historic milestone quest continues and he is due to compete with South Africa on Sunday, 14th December, at HPCA Stadium, Dharamsala, where the five-match series is tied at 1-1 following the first two games.
The performances of Sharma throughout the series between India and South Africa have been a mixture of clearly visible excitement and frustrating irregularity. In the first T20I, he got out for a low score while India was on its way to an impressive 101-run win, but in New Chandigarh he made a comeback with a stormy 17 runs off only 8 balls, hitting two sixes, one of which took him past 50 sixes in a year for T20 Internationals—thus, becoming a member of the exclusive club of Indian hitters with great power playing international T20s.
Going ahead, it is the turning of the Indian team’s fortunes that is totally reliant on Sharma’s metamorphosis from a player possessing raw talent to a consistent run-scorer, meanwhile, his explosive batting being the major factor that could swing the momentum in their favor during the remaining matches.
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