Ahmedabad: He was the poster boy of Team India, flamboyance personified, till the other day.
Abhishek Sharma was dispatching every bowler from every team to the stands at any stadium Team India played T20 Internationals in.
Then came the T20 World Cup, and the runs just dried up. So much so that the free-stroking left-handed opener did not open his account in any of the three group league matches he played.
As fans worry about the form of their one-man destruction army ahead of the Super 8 stage, skipper Suryakumar Yadav aka SKY faced the Abhishek question a day before their South Africa clash at Ahmedabad.
“Those who worry about Abhishek Sharma’s form, I worry about them.. Why do you worry so much about his form? I am worrying about the teams that will face him now, because he hasn’t scored yet,” Suryakumar said on Saturday.
“The rest of the answer, you know.. you know what happens when he goes big. It happens, it’s a team sport. It’s the team’s requirement that he plays for. He is trying to do that. If it clicks, great. If it doesn’t, we are there to cover for him. Last year, he covered for us. This time, let us do it,” SKY added.
The captain couldn’t have been more emphatic in backing his young opener.
SKY said the team management is not reading too much into Abhishek’s lean patch. In fact, he backed the opener to play a key role in the Super 8s and knockout stages of the T20 World Cup.
Abhishek, who last month set a world record for the fastest batter to reach 5,000 T20 runs, also received bowling coach Morne Morkel’s support a day earlier.
“Absolutely no discussion in our team group about that. He (Abhishek) is a world-class player. So far in the tournament, luckily, we’ve had other guys standing up with Abhishek not scoring the runs you would like. We are going through a very important phase of the World Cup now, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to deliver,” Morne said on Friday.
For someone who broke records at will in T20I cricket last year, scoring 859 runs at an average of 42 and a staggering strike rate of 193.46, 2026 has started in a weird fashion. He has registered 5 ducks in 7 T20I innings.
Fingers will be crossed as he goes out to open at Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday.
