Abhishek hit a 35-ball century to help his side to a six-wicket win in Wellington and a three-nil lead in the five-match series.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old’s innings of 113 came off 38 balls with all but 11 of those runs scored in boundaries.<\/p>\n
“We’ll take our hat off to him,” Black Caps batter Daryl Mitchell said after the game, “It was pretty special.”<\/p>\n
“I think some of that hitting was world class and that’s why he is one of the best in the world.<\/p>\n
“It was definitely his night and I’m sure it’s one that people won’t forget in a long time.”<\/p>\n
Abhishek’s knock is no surprise, he smashed a record 30-ball ton against Afghanistan in Delhi last month.<\/p>\n
He has now scored four centuries in 70 T20 internationals. He said it is a result of how much he practices.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, I feel it’s not that easy, but it’s just the preparation behind the scenes,” Abhishek said in a post match interview.<\/p>\n
“I feel that preparation is really important as a batter. If you see the [pitch] conditions and the [ground] dimensions, that’s always in your mind and then you have to keep the bowlers also in your mind and play the shots according to the ball. And that’s all I do.”<\/p>\n
Abhishek is currently the number two ranked T20 batter in the world, but he is likely to overtake team-mate Ishan Kishan in the near future.<\/p>\n
It was a record night for the visitors with Abhishek and 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi scoring a record 118 runs in the powerplay [first six overs].<\/p>\n
The opening pair put on 133 in 7.1 overs, setting their side up for an easy victory with 40 balls to spare as they chased down their target of 199.<\/p>\n
The New Zealand bowlers had no answers with Jacob Duffy going for 44 runs off two overs while Kyle Jamieson went for 45 off 3.2 overs.<\/p>\n
“A great power play,” Mitchell said, “We threw a few different plans at both of them there to try and slow them down and tonight wasn’t our night.<\/p>\n
“You take your hat off and say well played and look forward to Eden Park.”<\/p>\n
The fourth game is in Auckland on Friday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Abhishek hit a 35-ball century to help his side to a six-wicket win in Wellington and a three-nil…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-643237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}