Abhishek's Rampage and Need for Tweakers in T20s

When Abhishek Sharma was on the rampage at the Wankhede Stadium, I was thinking, which bowler in the world can possibly stop this carnage?

- Sanjay Manjrekar

The thing is, this exciting young left-hander drives on the up, pulls anything that is short, takes the yorker on the full and drives it straight down the ground for a boundary. When you take the pace off, he is ready for it, uses the loopy nature of the delivery to hit it even further.

Adil Rashid, a competent T20 wrist spinner, also could not stop him. He tried everything in his armoury, the leg spinner, the front of hand fast ball, the googly at various speeds; he tried all this around the wicket too.

Nothing worked.

So which bowler can stop this mayhem? Two bowlers came to mind, Shane Warne and Kuldeep Yadav. Why? Because both spinners turn the ball big.

That was their main focal point, to turn the ball a lot, give it a real rip first and then all the variations. There was an instance during Abhishek's innings where he danced down the pitch to Adil Rashid, and the experienced bowler that the leg-spinner is, he saw that and bowled a little short. Abhishek was not to the pitch of the ball, but from that position itself he let his bat swing come through and made a great connection. When he made that connection, his bat was at least a metre away from where the ball had pitched.

Now, Abhishek was able to make the connection because that ball did not turn much, it changed direction only slightly.