India whitewashed Afghanistan in the three-match T20 series. In the third and last match of the series in New Delhi, Team India defeated Afghanistan by 127 runs on the basis of Abhishek Sharma’s world record century. With this, India won this series by 3-0. Abhishek Sharma continued his explosive batting streak in the third match of the series and scored a century in just 30 balls, which is the fastest century (all three formats) among the full member countries. He played an inning of 108 runs but even the entire Afghanistan team together could not reach here.
This match played on 17 September at Arun Jaitley Stadium was in the name of only one player and he was Abhishek Sharma. In both the previous matches, Team India chased the target while batting in the second innings and in both the matches, Abhishek played explosive innings. But this time Team India batted first and in such a situation Abhishek Sharma had a chance to score maximum runs. This left-handed opener took full advantage of this and scored his third T20 International century.
Abhishek rained heavily, yearned for the remaining runs
But this was more special than Abhishek’s previous two centuries. He scored fifty in just 16 balls, on the basis of which Team India scored 100 runs in the powerplay for the first time. Then in the 9th over itself, Abhishek completed his century, which came in just 30 balls. In this way, it became the record for the fastest century in any format by the ICC full member countries. He broke the record of AB de Villiers (31 balls).
But when Abhishek (108 runs, 34 balls, 11 sixes, 9 fours) was out in the 10th over, the Indian batsmen failed miserably. Till 10 overs, India had scored 142 runs after losing 1 wicket. But in the end the team’s score was 221 runs for 7 wickets. That means in the next 10 overs only 79 runs were scored and 6 wickets fell. Apart from Abhishek, Sanju Samson (50) also scored his second consecutive half-century. Whereas captain Shreyas Iyer scored 29 runs.
Afghanistan collapsed for just 94 runs
But when it was Afghanistan’s turn, it had to be seen whether the batting improves this time compared to the last two matches or remains the same. A fast start of 31 runs in just 3 overs raised hopes of a fighting performance this time, but as soon as Akshar Patel (2 wickets) took the first wicket, Afghanistan’s train was derailed. After this, the batsmen just kept coming and returning after playing a few shots. Especially Nitish Kumar Reddy destroyed Afghanistan by taking 3 wickets in a single over. In the end, Ravi Bishnoi also took 3 wickets and Afghanistan’s innings collapsed for just 94 runs in 14.1 overs.