Former India captain and coach Anil Kumble said that Abhishek Sharma needs to find a balance between his attacking play and spending more time at the crease, drawing comparisons with Virender Sehwag ahead of the IPL season that starts on March 28.Twenty-five-year-old Abhishek has built a reputation for quick starts at the top of the order with his high-risk approach. However, his starts did not always lead to big scores.
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Ajit Agarkar is knocking on BCCI’s door asking for a huge extension | World Cup “I would pair him with someone like Virender Sehwag because he would want to smash every ball. When he moved from Test cricket to one-day cricket and then to T20 cricket, he realized he had to pace his innings a little differently,” said the former India coach.“But Sehwag would still go for a 140-150 strike-rate. So that’s something that Abhishek Sharma has to start thinking about and say, ‘I was scoring at a 200 strike-rate, the expectations are on me, should I go for a 300 strike-rate now?’ No, you just have to be normal. You have to play a range of balls,” Kumble said on JioStar as quoted by news agency PTI.Kumble pointed out that Abhishek has the ability to score quickly but needs to stay at the crease longer to make a bigger impact.“If Abhishek Sharma bats 20 balls in an innings, we know he will be close to that 50 mark. We saw it with Sanju Samson, he didn’t get out in the 40s or 50s, but to make it count by going deeper, he got to the 85-90 mark.“That’s what you need in the T20 format. Maybe it’s the kind of maturity you’ll see in Abhishek this season that SRH will be hoping for,” he added.Abhishek, who had a quiet campaign in the T20 World Cup, will next play for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the upcoming IPL.Former South Africa captain AB de Villiers also spoke about the need for consistency from the left-hander, especially with rising expectations.“He’s 25, not 20 anymore. So this is definitely the stage where he has to start taking more responsibility. There will be media pressure and people will ask him to be more consistent.”“We know he was a bit inconsistent during the T20 World Cup, which was disappointing. He had a good finish in the final but otherwise it was a quiet tournament for him. He was erratic at times. He had an incredible IPL 2025, scoring close to 200 runs and averaging in the 30s, which is a good score in the opening tournament. 00. better.“Once again, the consistency of the word comes to mind. It’s a personal challenge that he’ll have to overcome mentally.”De Villiers added that dealing with expectations will be key for Abhishek going forward.“Being the number one T20I international batsman in the world comes with expectations and that’s the most dangerous word in cricket when you feel like the whole world is closing in on you and it’s up to him to fight those mental battles in the coming season.”
