Dragging himself back to his feet, Abhishek Sharma disguised his disappointment of getting run out with a roguish smile at his captain Suryakumar Yadav. A third century in this format seemed inevitable, but his error of judgement, or alacrity of youth, crushed his dreams. But Abhishek is too genial and sporting to leave the field with a grumpy face. He and Gill are deconstructing the myth of batsmen from Punjab as short-fused, punch-ready alpha-men. He is an implacable Little Buddha, no crease of pressure, no frowns of disappointment, but a free-spirited youngster taking life and sport as he wants to. He emanates an unreal calm amongst his teammates and chaos in the brain of opponents.

Or to phrase it differently Sehwagian in essence. He is also the closest to Virender Sehwag India have unearthed. His left-handed reincarnation, a country that nourishes myths and legends might well say. Like him, he reduces the complex art of batting, made more complex by the changing concepts of T20 batting, to the irreducible see ball, hit ball principle. A simple theory, but wordly-wise batsmen would confess that is the most difficult thing to do. First to shut out the noise, from the stands as well as the mind, to brush off the distractions, to see the ball just as it is, a spindly leather object, to assess its nature in the blink of an eye and to react with the most rewarding shot. The perception of a rewarding stroke varies. For some, it would be a well-judged leave on a green track; for Abhishek it is hitting the ball as far as he could. Not that he looks to dump every ball out of the ground, the first thought often is a boundary. The rest are afterthoughts.

It’s how modern T20 openers are trained to. But Abhishek, for all the hard labour he puts in the nets, is not a trained hitter. But a natural one. Like the genuine fast bowlers are not made, but born, natural hitters are a freak specimen. Abhishek doesn’t have the shoulders of Phil Salt, or the forearms of Jos Buttler, or the dexterous wrists of Suryakumar Yadav, or the insouciance of Travis Head. But he has a vision, a difference in how he sees the game.
The principles of batting are simple. The first impulse is to hit down the ground, sweet and uncluttered swipes. Anything in the arc, anything within the reach of his arms, he demolishes them down the ground or through the covers. Sometimes, to get to the pitch he blasts down the ground, with long and firm strides. Three of his six maximums came either side of the sightscreen. Four of his eight fours arrived through covers. Any of the shots could do his walls. The bat-swing undisturbed, the weight transfer fluid and the sound of the willow a note of melody. As many as 50 off his 76 runs, that is 67 percent of his exploits, were fetched through this region.

Among a stream of sixes and fours, his second, of the guileful Mustafizur Rahman. It was a length delivery into his body, quicker than most of his deliveries. It’s a ball most good batsmen would have looked to hit through mid-off, better one straighter, and geniuses like Abhishek through long-on. He got under the ball, most would have hit it on the rise, and simply cajoled it over long-on. Mustafizur, a veteran of 149 wickets, would not have watched a more delectable stroke off his bowling.

His wagon-wheel is an antithesis to the classical T20 norms. Not a single run was wrought behind the stumps on the leg side. Not for him the risks of scoops and sweeps. He can, but why would he if he owns such commanding off-side splendour? So was Sehwag, immune to pyrotechnics, as though he considered those a refuge of the showmen. Like Sehwag he could explode from nowhere, catching the adversaries in an unpreventable storm of boundaries. He was nine from nine balls, the only four in that time came from the outside of the bat and was dropped. The fielders chirped and chattered, tried to bully him into a folly.

But as if everything was normal, he broke free. There is little chaos when he does so. But a heightened sense of surety; spectators are not clutched by suspense but are hooked in a trance. He doesn’t give the audience the time to even appreciate the grandeur of his strokes, or replay those in his mind. It’s like an action flick. In a trice, he plundered 39 off 11. The early momentum Bangladesh had built was blown to smithereens. India raced from 17 for 0 in 3 overs to 72 for 0 in six overs. India lost Gill, soon the experimentally promoted Shivam Dube too. Soon Abhishek departed too, Bangladesh damage-controlled, but the impact of his 75 was such that India still mustered a score above par. Like Sehwag conveyed an impression that the pitch was better to bat than it looked when others batted.
Post powerplay, he summoned a different approach, responding to the wickets falling around him. He still scored his runs at a brisk pace–29 off 18–but was game-aware enough to gift his wicket, which could have ceded the advantage to Bangladesh. Until the run out happened. Recently, Suryakumar complimented his post-powerplay game: “As he passes the powerplay, he can still bat the same way he bats in the powerplay. But the way he analyses the situation post power play, what is required of him, what bowlers are going to bowl, that’s a plus point for him.”
In quest for perfection, Abhishek wants to face more balls in an innings. So far in 21 innings, he has faced 30-plus balls only four times in his career. Twice it ended up with hundreds. As if marrying aggression with consistency is not difficult enough–an average of 37.28 and strike rate of 197.72, his ambition to devour more deliveries would be frightening news for bowlers. Like bowlers of a generation feared Sehwag.