Former India player Mohammad Kaif applauded Abhishek Sharma after the third T20I against Afghanistan. The Indian team registered a thumping 127-run win and completed a 3-0 whitewash. Abhishek Sharma was in his best form with the bat. He smashed a 30-ball hundred, the fastest by an Indian batter in T20Is. He also smashed 108 runs off just 34 balls with nine fours and 11 sixes at a strike rate of 317.65 as well.

“Abhishek has worked on his game as well. If you remember, he used to go to hit shots from the very first ball in the Asia Cup and got out as well. Now, he is giving himself three to four balls and then going for his shots. This was a commendable knock, and you will not find such a player again. He is a gift that we need to preserve,” he said in a video on his Instagram handle.

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“He dominated, hitting sixes down the ground. In this series, he has hit more sixes despite being under pressure. What we can learn from this is that if a batter does not score in a few innings, he does not become a bad batter, because an innings that is the fastest hundred comes after that, so it is important to back players,” he again shared.

Before the Afghanistan series, Abhishek Sharma failed to score a single fifty in seven innings. He had scores of 43, 10, 16, 3, 1, 8 and 2 as well. However, Mohammad Kaif said that there was immense pressure on the batter due to huge competition, with someone like Vaibhav Suryavanshi waiting outside as well.

“There was a lot of pressure on Abhishek Sharma. In his last seven innings, there was no fifty, and in India, if you get out in one or two games, there is no guarantee you will get the third game. The competition is such that Vaibhav Suryavanshi is waiting behind. There was a lot of pressure. But the way he made a comeback and counterattacked, it is praiseworthy,” he concluded.