When Abhishek Sharma walked away with the Player of the Tournament award at the Asia Cup 2025, it felt like a career coming full circle. Four years ago, he wasn’t even a regular in the IPL. Today, he’s India’s first-choice T20I opener and the top-ranked batter in the world with a record-breaking 931 points on the ICC charts.
But if you ask him, the seeds for this rise were sown in the most unlikely of settings — over lunch at Yuvraj Singh’s house during the pandemic.
“We were having lunch at his place and paaji told me straight away that he was not preparing me for the state or the IPL or even to get a cap for India,” Abhishek said on Breakfast with Champions. “He told me I am making you ready to win games for India. Write this and it will happen in the next two to three years.”
Yuvraj wasn’t bluffing. Almost to the year, that prediction has held true.
Unlike some of his 2018 Under-19 teammates, Abhishek didn’t get fast-tracked. Prithvi Shaw was in India’s Test team by the end of that year, Shubman Gill soon after. Abhishek had to wait until 2024 for his international debut. And he’s glad it turned out that way.
“Some players get in easily. Some come in after some difficulty. But I feel this [domestic grind] was necessary. If I had made it quicker as a [national team] player, I wouldn’t have learned some things,” Abhishek says.
That grind, combined with Yuvraj’s obsessive eye for detail, aided Abhishek. Yuvraj, who he hails as a terrific mentor, would watch videos, make notes, grab screenshots from different angles and helped reshape Abhishek. From a middle-order bat and part-time spinner, he turned himself into a destructive opener, unafraid to take down the best in the powerplay.
His takedown of Shaheen Shah Afridi across successive games against Pakistan was the defining moment of the Asia Cup. By the end of the tournament, he had piled up 314 runs in seven innings with three half-centuries on the trot.
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Abhishek also credits the current Indian team environment as much as his own work and Yuvraj’s. With Suryakumar Yadav and Gautam Gambhir backing him, he has been able to commit fully to an aggressive, high-risk approach.
“Since the time I have been in the [national] team, I have not felt this is a pressure match. Surya bhai and GG bhai have given me confidence. When you want to play a high-risk game, failures do come. But the way they handled me, I am able to play like this because of that.”
It is a style that has come to define India’s batting in this format ahead of their T20 World Cup defence — fearless, proactive, built on intent from the very first ball. Abhishek is now at the forefront of it, but he insists this is only the beginning.
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