Former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram has lavished praises on Indian opening batter Abhishek Sharma. The southpaw scored 79 in the first T20I in Kolkata and followed up with scores of 12 and 24 in the next two games in Chennai and Rajkot.
He has played a very high-risk brand of cricket so far in his brief international career. He has looked good when the risks came off while has looked rather ordinary when they did not.
India lost the third T20I by 26 runs as they failed to track down 172 required to win. Meanwhile, Sharma has had a mixed start to his T20I career. In the first 15 games, he has scored 371 runs with a hundred and two fifties.
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Meanwhile, Wasim Akram speaking to Sportskeeda has lavished praises on the young southpaw. He termed him as a special talent during his recent interaction.
"This boy is something special. He's got a bright future ahead. "But don't be relaxed. Don't be happy with yourself. Enjoy on the day and then move on because it's a long journey" Akram said.
He Is On The Right Track: Wasim Akram On Abhishek Sharma
The former Pakistan skipper said that the youngster has learned from past greats like Brian Lara and Yuvraj Singh and said that he was lucky to have learned from them.
"I believe Brian Lara has worked on him a lot [during his SRH stint] and then Yuvi has been working with him for a couple of years. He [Abhishek] has found good role models to mentor him - one of the greatest of all time Brian Lara and one of the greatest hitters of all-time Yuvraj Singh" Akram said.
"He's on the right track, very impressive. It's very important to have mentors in life in any field. Sharma ji got the right mentors. Imagine how proud the two of them will be feeling. Their hard work is paying off. Earlier, Lara had said that he is mentally not there yet. The talent is very much there, but this year [2024] he has achieved that goal too," Akram went on to add.
Abhishek Sharma has only played T20I cricket for India. He played his first IPL season for Delhi Capitals in 2017. However, it was with Sunrisers Hyderabad that he grew as a batter. He flourished for them last season scoring 484 runs in 16 matches at a strike rate of 204.22. Overall, he has scored 1377 runs in the IPL with seven fifties at a strike rate of above 155.
