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How Yuvraj Singh created a mean machine out of a smiling Abhishek

National Herald | April 22, 2026 11:40 PM CST

It was the social media post that Abhishek Sharma — the man they're calling a bowlers’ nightmare in powerplays — must have been waiting for the most after his cracking 135 against Delhi Capitals on Tuesday. ‘’Let the bat do the work. Getting better each day (clap) well played sir Abhishek. Keep up with the process,’’ posted his mentor Yuvraj Singh.

This is perhaps as much of an encomium that Yuvraj — one of India’s finest white-ball matchwinners — would allow for one of his favourite wards. The story of how the two-time World Cup winner opened the doors to his Chandigarh home for two of his wards — Shubman Gill and Abhishek — during the Covid lockdown has acquired a life of its own but the list of his wards is growing by the day, with Punjab Kings openers Priyansh Arya and Prabhsimran Singh also picking his brains now.

A T20 century by Abhishek — the ICC world no. 1 T20 batter — especially in the IPL doesn’t surprise his fans any longer, but the one on Tuesday had a special ring about it. The 25-year-old now has nine career T20 centuries, the same as Virat Kohli, after playing less than half the number of matches than the master batter.

The nightmare of three ducks on the trot in the last T20 World Cup looks like a distant memory now, but his job is far from done as the Abhishek-Travis Head duo must continue to wreak havoc in the powerplays for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the remaining seven matches for a spot in the play-offs.

AUS vs INDIA: Player of the Series Abhishek has World T20 on the radar

If a T20 game is a statistician’s nightmare for its frenetic pace, the job gets doubly difficult when someone like an Abhishek or one of the Gen Z batters is in the middle. His century against Delhi at home came off 47 balls — making him only the second batter after Chris Gayle to score two IPL hundreds in less than 50 balls. The question already being asked is: can he break the Universe Boss’ record of 22 T20 centuries when he is done?

Interestingly enough, such phenomenal consistency did not come overnight for the allrounder, who made a quiet IPL entry in 2018 with Delhi Capitals (then Delhi Daredevils) as a product of the India Under-19 pipeline. The same year, Gill announced his arrival with Kolkata Knight Riders and was immediately hailed as one for the future for his poise and technique, while Abhishek had to bide his time after switching to the Orange Army, where the team management pitchforked him into the opener’s role.

If Abhishek needed direction and a ruthless work ethic, the man who provided it — along with some tough love — has been Yuvraj. The cancer survivor, who in his playing days was often accused of not being disciplined enough, laid out a four-year plan for the talented youngster for the India cap back in 2020 and it panned out that way. The career graph showed a 360-degree change and since 2023, Abhishek has scored 4,000 runs in his trusted format with a strike rate of 196, a testimony to the so-called high-risk, high-reward approach.

What exactly were the tweaks that Yuvraj made to his game? The mentor and Brian Lara (the Trinidad master served as batting mentor for SRH for one season) introduced the youngster to golf, a sport where the swing relies on core rotation, arm rotation and follow through. Abhishek took to it, and the results started showing as any delivery on his arc started flying to the boundaries with alarming regularity.

It’s not for nothing that the great Kapil Dev, now a regular golfer and president of the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI), wrote in a signed column a few days ago that he would have scored at least 2,000 runs more had he taken up golf simultaneously with cricket.

The Abhishek-Head combination is now reminding IPL followers of the glory days of the David Warner-Jonny Bairstow combine, but the level of devastation is up manifold as the format has changed dramatically over the last two years.

A piece of statistic says their combined run-rate is 12.37, while in the last two seasons, SRH has posted the two highest powerplay scores in history: 125 and 107, both for no loss. At this rate, that elusive 300-total may well be round the corner.