”Not many shots. ”
it is Abhishek Sharma After he hit 84 out of 35 balls against his opponent; new zealand in First T20I at Nagpur. He was not humble. He rarely plays scoops, ramps and reverse hits, which are essential ingredients for a modern T20 batsman. Still, he hits 190.92 in T20Is.
the same applies Link ShinHe finished with an unbeaten 44 out of 20 pitches. IndiaWednesday’s innings. Scoops, ramps and reverse sweeps combined accounted for just 1% of his T20I career runs, according to ESPNcricinfo’s log. But like Abhishek, he has one of the highest strike rates in the format at 165.
And it expands to 287.83 in the final two overs of a T20I innings. Of all the players from the Full Member States who faced at least 20 balls in this mini-phase, no player scored faster than Rinku. If you limit yourself to just 20 overs, it comes to a mind-boggling 302.63. Using the same filter – full squad and 20 balls – only Surakumar Yadav (321.42) is better than Rink. But when Suryakumar is batting in the 20th over, he is already set. Such luxuries are rare at Rinku.
Both Abhishek and Rinku were key to India’s eventual 48-run victory in Nagpur, but Rinku’s innings perhaps had more significance for both him and the team. Since his T20I debut in July 2024, Abhishek Such knocks occur with such frequency His latest work felt like routine work. Meanwhile, Rinku was returning to the side. With the T20 World Cup just 17 days away, he has lived up to the high expectations.
With dew expected in the second innings, India needed an above-average total. Abhishek’s innings powered them to 149 in 12 overs. However, their hyper-aggressive approach also kept them losing wickets. When Rinku came on, they were 5 down in 13.4 overs.
Rinku has said in the past that he tries to stay as calm as possible in the midfield. advice he got From MS Dhoni. But on Wednesday, he was feeling the heat.
“I’ve been away from the team, but when you come back there’s a certain amount of pressure,” he said after the game. “My thought process was to focus on singles and doubles for a while and try to find boundaries here and there. I was going to hit it all the way.”
Rinku couldn’t have executed it better. He transitioned into a run-a-ball seven before reaching his first boundary, but it wasn’t a scoop or a flashy shot, it was an off-drive. With three overs left and Axar Patel still at the other end, he faced debutant Christian Clarke, and after hitting a short ball in the ranks for six at short fine leg, he guided a wide one for four from cover. Neither shot was high-risk, but he still raced to 12-of-22.
However, Axar dropped the ball after two balls, leaving Rink and the last one with 13 deliveries. This very stage of his development had to be carefully navigated.
Rinku took a single off the first legal ball of the 19th over, hoping that his new partner Arshdeep Singh would return the strike. Arshdeep could not connect on the next three deliveries. It was starting to look like Rinku had made a mistake. However, Arshdeep got a boundary off the fifth ball and the two were happy not to run off the last ball, with Rinku ensuring a strike in the 20th over.
As a result, New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner had to make a difficult decision. He and Ish Sodhi each had an over remaining. However, both players aimed the ball toward Rinku’s feet. Despite Rinku scoring just 113.79 against this type of bowling in T20Is, Santner did not take that risk as the length of the square boundary is just 66 meters.
Another slow bowler, off-spinner Glenn Phillips, had leaked 20 in his only over of the night. So Santner decided to go with seams. With all the front seamers hitting their quotas, he brought along Darryl Mitchell, a part-time medium pacer who had never bowled an over before. Rinku’s strike rate against the seam in T20Is is 180.30. He beat Mitchell brilliantly in a 21-run over with 26 and 2 fours to deny India a dewy total.
It was this very quality of taking down the down seam bowling and ending the innings that perhaps helped him return to the team. When the team management decided to field Shubman Gill in place of Sanju Samson for the T20I against South Africa in December, someone in the middle order had to step in to replace new wicketkeeper Jitesh Sharma. With Shivam Dube providing the sixth bowling option, Rinku became collateral damage. But when Gill failed to replicate his IPL 2025 performance (650 runs at a strike rate of 155.87), the selectors went back to the original blueprint.
Wednesday’s game at least showed that their decision was correct. Or maybe it was all “God’s plan,” as Rinku likes to say, and as written in the tattoo on his left forearm.