Sunrisers Hyderabad youngster Abhishek Sharma has beaten Virat Kohli to become the second fastest Indian to score a century in List A cricket. The 20-year-old Punjab cricketer smashed a 42-ball hundred while chasing a mammoth 403-run target against Madhya Pradesh in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy on Sunday, 28 February.
Opening the innings for Punjab, Sharma was the only one to cross the 40-run mark for his team, fighting it out in the middle, while others perished around him.
He was caught out in the 18th over after setting the stage on fire scoring 104 off 49 deliveries at a strike rate of over 200. The innings was 8 boundaries and 9 sixes.
In his whirlwind innings, he dismantled the likes of Suryakumar Yadav and Virat Kohli who previously held the second and third spot behind Yusuf Pathan.
While Kohli’s 52-ball century came against Australia back in 2013, Yadav recently dislodged the former for the second spot by completing his century in just 50 deliveries against Puducherry on 25 February.
Sharma’s knock means that Sky and Kohli have been relegated to the third and fourth spot respectively.
The wily left-hander was picked up by Sunrisers Hyderabad ahead of IPL 2020 and represented the side in eight matches. He picked up 2 wickets and scored 71 runs.
A glimpse of his brilliance was seen in the match against CSK, where he and Priyam Garg, another SRH youngster, put together a crucial partnership of 77 runs to rescue the David Warner-led side from a disaster. Sharma was not out at 31 off 24 balls in that match.
In other news, Karnataka batsman and Royal Challengers Bangalore batsman Devdutt Padikkal scored his third century in a row and now aggregates 572 runs from his last five matches.