Abhishek Sharma Takes Over as India Cruise Past Afghanistan
There’s a particular kind of cricket match that stops being a contest the moment one player decides it should. Sunday night at the Arun Jaitley Stadium was that kind of match, and Abhishek Sharma was that player.
Afghanistan had, by most reasonable measures, done the hard part. Reduced to 43 for 5 inside the first quarter of their innings, they hauled themselves back to a fighting 156 for 8 through nothing but grit and a well-timed partnership. Any team that survives a start like that has earned the right to feel decent about its total. India didn’t let them enjoy it for long.
A Second Ball, a Wobble, a Rescue
Jasprit Bumrah has a habit of making the first over of a match feel like the last nail in someone’s coffin, and he did it again here — Rahmanullah Gurbaz gone for nothing, second ball of the innings. What followed wasn’t much better for the tourists. Wickets kept falling at odd intervals until Afghanistan were staring at a genuine crisis, five down with barely forty on the board.
Credit where it’s due: Azmatullah Omarzai and Mohammad Nabi didn’t panic. They rebuilt, carefully at first and then with real intent, adding 83 for the sixth wicket in a stand that carried Afghanistan from “collapse” territory to “we might actually have something here.” Omarzai went unbeaten on 64 off 44 balls — four fours, four sixes, the innings of someone who understood exactly how much his side needed him. Nabi’s 33 off 27 was the perfect complement, less showy but every bit as necessary.
Then the Chase Started, and Everyone Else Became a Spectator
156 is not a small total in most conditions. It became a small total the moment Abhishek Sharma decided the powerplay belonged to him.
Sanju Samson was gone early, caught for 10, and if Afghanistan thought that gave them an opening, they were wrong about that too. Abhishek walked in and, within a handful of balls, made it clear this chase wasn’t going to be about patience. Fifty came up in 22 balls. He and Ishan Kishan then put together 121 runs in just 53 deliveries, a partnership that didn’t so much build the chase as detonate it. Rashid Khan — genuinely one of the best white-ball bowlers on the planet — got taken for six over mid-wicket and simply had no follow-up plan. Fazalhaq Farooqi leaked 26 in a single over. By the time drinks came around, India were already 130 for 1.
Abhishek on 82 off 32 balls, seven fours and seven sixes, a strike rate that makes the scorecard look almost implausible. Ishan 42 off 33 gets undersold in the retelling, but it was the steadier half of a stand that ended the match as a genuine contest somewhere around the tenth over. India got home at 157 for 3 with 13.4 overs gone — more than six overs to spare. Nabi’s 2 for 28 was, quietly, the best Afghan bowling figures of the night, which says everything about how one-sided the chase became.
Zadran’s Honest Assessment
Ibrahim Zadran, leading Afghanistan’s T20I side for the first time in a permanent capacity, wasn’t inclined to dress up what happened. He said afterward that his side had batted well through the middle overs but hadn’t put together a total that was ever going to be competitive — which is about as accurate a read as you’ll get from a losing captain. The recovery from 43 for 5 was real. It just wasn’t enough against a lineup with Abhishek Sharma in this kind of form.
The Odd Business of Hosting Your Own Away Series
One detail worth flagging for anyone confused by the “Afghanistan tour of India” framing: every match in this series is being played in Delhi, yet Afghanistan are technically the hosts. That’s not a paperwork error — Afghanistan simply doesn’t have a venue of its own currently certified for international cricket, so home fixtures get staged elsewhere while retaining official host status. Both boards are using this three-match series, branded the Friendship Cup, as a warm-up ahead of the 2026 Asian Games, and it doubles as Zadran’s first assignment since taking over the T20I captaincy full-time.
For context on just how lopsided this rivalry has become in the shorter format: India had won eight of their previous nine T20Is against Afghanistan before a ball was bowled here, with the other match washed out to no result. Sunday did nothing to disturb that trend.
Two Games Left, One Clear Problem to Fix
India go 1-0 up with the second T20I set for September 15, back at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, followed by the decider on September 17 — both starting at 7:00 PM IST. Afghanistan’s issue isn’t really their middle order, which has now bailed them out twice in recent memory. It’s the top of the innings. Losing five wickets inside the powerplay against a bowling attack built around Bumrah and Arshdeep is not something a partnership, however good, can consistently paper over. Unless Gurbaz and company find a steadier start, this series risk turning into a formality well before the third match.
India’s task from here is less about winning — that looks fairly secure — and more about how much they choose to experiment with their XI before bigger tournaments later in the year.
