India has ended up facing an unexpected bogey at this tournament. Their left-hand-batter-heavy top-order has invited opposition to target them with offspin. Abhishek came into this game with scores of 0, 0, 0 and 15. Two of those ducks were the result of those match-ups working against him, and on Thursday, he walked into the place where the most famous offspinner vs big hitter trap was sprung: R Ashwin cleaning up Chris Gayle to win the Chennai Super Kings the IPL title in 2011.

Abhishek's training suggested he was aware of some of this; that he now needed something slightly more than his see-ball-hit-ball instincts, at least for the first few deliveries. So he worked extensively on keeping his bat face straight. He still wasn't holding back his shot,s but he was playing percentages and respecting the fact that he was currently short of runs. During his 55 off 30, he scored 37 runs down the ground, including all four of his sixes.

Other factors might have come into play as well. India brought in the right-handed Sanju Samson as an opener to discourage teams from going to their offspinner straight away. Zimbabwe actually bowled all pace in the powerplay, at a ground where pace has gone for 9.9 runs per over in this T20 World Cup. Sikandar Raza was hit for a lot of runs by Shimron Hetmyer in Zimbabwe's previous game against the West Indies. Maybe that played a part in his delaying spin until the field restrictions were lifted.

Suryakumar Yadav played the orthodox sweep first ball. Ishan Kishan dipped into the reverse sweep and almost got caught. Tilak Varma launched the first two balls he faced up in the air. Abhishek was playing like this earlier in the T20 World Cup, backing away from the stumps, trying to pull good-length balls off the back foot because that's what he does. In IPL 2024, he made 484 runs without ever facing more than 30 balls in an innings. He's had success going out and trying to hit every ball to the boundary, even against offspin, where his strike rate in the IPL is 174.

But that's all in the past. Right now, he wasn't doing so well,l and he had the maturity to accept that and give himself a little bit of time in the middle. Relatively speaking. He still had a strike rate of nearly 200 when he brought up hisfiftyf, ty but it whis second-slowestest fifty in T20Is. He was 8 off 9 against offspin before attempting his first big shot - stepping down to the pitch of the ball to hit a six over long-on

Coming into the World Cup, Abhishek was tapped to be the player of the tournament by former Australia captain and one of his first coaches, Ricky Ponting. Ponting even admitted he had pleaded with the Delhi Capitals staff not to trade him to Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2018. Abhishek worries the opposition and excites fans and experts alike because he isn't afraid to get out. This little rut, and the fact that he has managed to get one solid score without giving up on the way he plays, feels like an important step in his journey as a batter.