Delhi has seen its share of white-ball carnage. This was something else.
Abhishek Sharma needed only 30 deliveries to rip up the T20I record books, hammering the fastest hundred by a batter from a Test-playing nation and propelling India to a 3-0 sweep over Afghanistan.
By the time he walked off, Delhi was still echoing with the sound of leather disappearing into the night.
A hundred in fast-forward
Thirty balls. That was all.
Abhishek’s 108 from 34 deliveries was a blur of clean hitting and calculated aggression: 11 sixes, nine fours, and almost no time to breathe between them. Afghanistan’s attack never settled; every minor error in length or line vanished over the ropes.
The left-hander didn’t just break a record, he tore past it. Finn Allen’s 33-ball hundred for New Zealand against South Africa in the T20 World Cup semi-final in Kolkata earlier this year had set the modern benchmark among players from Test nations. Sikandar Raza matched that mark for Zimbabwe against Gambia in October 2024.
Abhishek went three balls better.
His hundred is now the quickest in a T20 international between two Test-playing countries, a detail that underlines the scale of the assault. This wasn’t a soft outing on a quiet associate ground. This was a full international, under lights, with a series on the line and Afghanistan fielding a proper attack.
A place in T20 history
On the global list, only a handful of names sit above him.
The fastest men’s T20I hundred remains Sahil Chauhan’s 27-ball special for Estonia against Cyprus in 2024. Muhammad Fahad’s 29-ball effort for Turkey against Bulgaria follows. Abhishek now slots in just behind them, but crucially, at the top of the tree for players from Test nations.
In women’s T20 internationals, Deandra Dottin still stands alone with her 38-ball hundred for West Indies against South Africa in St Kitts back in 2010, an innings that set the standard for explosive batting in the women’s game.
Abhishek has now carved out his own landmark in that same conversation of pure, unfiltered hitting.
India pile on, Afghanistan crumble
Powered by their new record-breaker, India surged to 221-7. Every over that Abhishek faced looked oversized. Once he fell, the scoring rate inevitably dipped, but the damage had already been done. Afghanistan’s shoulders dropped long before the innings closed.
The chase never truly started.
Afghanistan folded meekly for 94, bundled out in 14.1 overs. Any hope of a spirited reply evaporated as India’s bowlers swarmed. Nitish Kumar Reddy ripped through the middle order in the 12th over, grabbing three wickets and snapping what little resistance remained.
Abhishek still found a way to be in the thick of it, pouching a catch as the visitors collapsed. It felt fitting: the man who broke the game open with the bat also had a hand in closing it with the ball in motion.
India walked away with a 3-0 series win. The margin on the night, and across the rubber, told its own story.
Joining elite company
This was not a one-off eruption. Abhishek now has three T20I hundreds, already climbing into rare air for India. Only Rohit Sharma, with five, and Suryakumar Yadav, with four, sit above him on the list of Indian centurions in the format.
Rohit, too, saw one of his own records fall. His 35-ball hundred against Sri Lanka in Indore in 2017 had stood as India’s fastest in T20Is. Abhishek shaved five balls off that mark, a symbolic passing of the torch in a format that keeps demanding more speed, more power, more audacity.
Domestic bowlers in India knew this was coming. Abhishek has already produced an even faster hundred in Indian T20 cricket, blasting a 28-ball ton for Punjab against Meghalaya in 2024. Delhi simply became the stage where that form finally exploded at international level.
The numbers are staggering, but the impression is even stronger: a young batter who doesn’t just score quickly, he rewrites the pace at which a T20 innings can unfold.
India have seen great T20 innings before. Now they have a new reference point.
The question, for every attack that faces him next, is brutal in its simplicity: how do you bowl to a man who treats 30 balls as more than enough time for a hundred?
