Abhishek Sharma won a new world record for himself on Sunday during the third T20I match between India and the West Indies played at Holkar Stadium in Indore.
He has become the quickest player to reach 2,000 T20I runs in terms of balls faced by doing that feat in 1,024 balls.
He achieved the milestone by scoring his 33rd run of the innings.
He had been beaten by someone who was sitting in the same room when he was changing his attire.
Captain of the Indian T20I team, Suryakumar Yadav, needed 1,164 balls to score 2,000 runs. Abhishek only needed 140 fewer balls than Suryakumar to score the same.
The difference between Abhishek and other players is massive. Let’s have a look at how many balls were bowled by players for 2000 T20I runs:
Abhishek Sharma (India) - 1024 Suryakumar Yadav (India) - 1164 Aaron Finch (Australia) - 1283. Glenn Maxwell (Australia) – 1304 Hardik Pandya (India) – 1390 Tim Seifert (NZ) – 1395 balls.
Out of a total of six players, only four are from India or Australia, but none of them can get near to the record of Abhishek, even by 100 balls.
Abhishek alone becomes the sixth Indian player to make 2,000 runs in T20Is. The players include Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, and KL Rahul. Not only that, but he is the youngest player among other players having scored 2,000 runs in T20Is. He made his T20I debut at the tender age of 26 in July 2024 against Zimbabwe.
It is clear from this that within only two years, he made this number of runs.
This is not the first time that Abhishek has broken any record of speed. This is just another instance in this trend.
He became the fastest to reach 1,000 T20I runs by balls faced, completing it in 528 balls in Brisbane against Australia, breaking Tim David's record of 569 and putting Suryakumar at third place with 573.
With this 2,000-run record by 1,024 balls faced, he reached his second thousand runs in just 496 balls.
These figures by ESPNcricinfo give a hint about what makes Abhishek's strike rate special.
He made the quickest 5,000-run mark in all T20s by taking 2,898 balls to score them. Andre Russell used to hold this record, and his record was 2,942 balls. There isn't any batter who scored this much with a strike rate of 160 or more.
Abhishek also has the record of scoring seven fifties in T20Is in less than 25 balls, alongside Faisal Khan of Saudi Arabia.
The international career of Abhishek began silently and then suddenly became very vibrant.
In his debut innings, he was dismissed as a duck, but he scored a century in his second innings against Zimbabwe in July 2024. He required 46 balls to score that century, which made his fastest century the joint third-fastest for India in a T20I.
His 135-run innings against England is India’s best-ever T20I score individually. His innings contained 13 sixes, the maximum by any Indian in a T20I innings.
Sixes are a vital part of how Abhishek scores runs. Abhishek is now up to over 135 sixes in his T20I career.
It is consistent with his current rivalry with 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who hits more sixes in a year. Abhishek has been winning that rivalry up until now.
There is no lack of commitments in India’s schedule and Abhishek will continue to score runs as the opener.
Fastest-to-2,000 run record is a mark that not many will be able to achieve in a short span of time. With his scoring rate, Abhishek will also be able to reach other milestones soon.
