Asia Cup 2025: Abhishek Sharma Is Everything An Indian Cricket Fan From The 1990s Would Have Wanted

If an Indian cricket fan slept through the nightmarish 1990s, when flamboyant left-handers like Sanath Jayasuriya and Saeed Anwar bludgeoned Indian bowling attacks to shreds, and manifested retribution in equal measure decades down the line, the answer has well and truly arrived.

The name is Abhishek Sharma.

The charming 25-year-old from Amritsar has been the toast of the 2025 Asia Cup with a strike rate in excess of 200 tormenting bowling attacks with his relentless strokeplay studded with massive sixes and striking fours.

With 309 runs from six innings, all in match winning causes, with an average of 51.50, Abhishek has been the heart of Indian batting in the continenal showpiece this time.

The Punjab batter has treated pacers and spinners with equal disdain sparing none as he went about pulverising the opposition attacks, be it UAE, Pakistan, Oman, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh.

In Cricinfo's Total Impact List, Abhishek is right at the top with 442.44 impact points and that also includes his very handy part time spin bowling chops.

What makes Abhishek dangerous from an opposition point of view is the sheer range and scale of his shots.

The southpaw can take on the likes of Shaheen Shah Afridi or Haris Rauf and smash them for maximums square off the wicket, play a glorious lofted cover drive or deposit the ball far away with a pick up shot on the on side.

When it comes to the spinners, the likes of Saim Ayub, Abrar Ahmed and Mahedi Hasan would know the treatment he dished out to them leaving them with no time to settle down or get into a rhythm.

Such is anyway the brutal nature of T20 cricket from a bowler's perspective, that when a batsman of Abhishek's caliber is on song and coming at you, one can only hope to get lucky apart from pitching the ball in the right areas.

With 60 sixes in 22 T20I innings, Abhishek's tremendous ability to get the highest value for his shots and the natural ability makes him standout from the rest.

What Abhishek does the best is to go on a six-hitting rampage in the powerplay and the first 8-10 overs that even if he perishes at the end of it, he has created a super solid base for India to build on for a massive total.

It's a different matter that Team India's dependence on Abhishek to provide the rocketing start could pose some challenges for them considering that middle order batting has been a little wobbly.

Skipper Suryakumar Yadav has not been at his best and Hardik Pandya is yet to come into his own while Tilak Varma has been relatively more consistent.

Sanju Samson is another batter who has been in a blow hot-blow cold mode batting at No 5 or 6.

With all these factors in the background, the time that Abhishek spends in the middle will be something the opposition bowlers will dread the most and Pakistan will be probably spending a fair amount of time trying to decipher the best way to send him packing early come Sunday.