Abhishek Sharma Sets Record with 30-Ball T20I Century
Abhishek Sharma blasted the fastest T20 international hundred by a batter from a Test-playing nation, reaching three figures in just 30 balls against Afghanistan and ripping apart every notion of a settling-in period.
By the time he walked off, he had 108 from 34 deliveries. Eleven sixes. Nine fours. A blur of bat swing and clean contact that turned a routine bilateral into a landmark night.
He didn’t just beat the record. He smashed it. New Zealand’s Finn Allen and Zimbabwe’s Sikandar Raza had shared the previous benchmark with 33-ball centuries. Allen’s came in the high-pressure glare of a T20 World Cup semi-final against South Africa in Kolkata earlier this year. Raza’s arrived against Gambia in October 2024. Both felt rapid. Abhishek made them look almost measured.
His 30-ball surge is now the quickest T20I hundred ever scored in a match between two Test-playing nations. In an era obsessed with speed, this was warp drive.
The wider T20I landscape still has one name at the top. Estonia’s Sahil Chauhan owns the overall men’s record with a 27-ball hundred against Cyprus in 2024, while Turkey’s Muhammad Fahad produced a 29-ball ton against Bulgaria a year later. In the women’s game, West Indies star Deandra Dottin set the standard long ago, hammering a 38-ball century versus South Africa in St Kitts back in 2010.
But in the mainstream, high-stakes arena of Test nations, Abhishek now stands alone.
His assault powered India to 221-7 in Delhi, a total that quickly proved mountainous. Afghanistan never came close. They folded for 94, all out in 14.1 overs, as India sealed a 3-0 series sweep with something bordering on inevitability.
Abhishek still found time to influence the chase, pouching a catch, while Nitish Kumar Reddy ripped through the middle order with three wickets in the 12th over to slam the door shut.
This hundred also repositions Abhishek in India’s T20 hierarchy. He now has three T20I centuries, the third-most by an Indian batter. Only Rohit Sharma, with five, and Suryakumar Yadav, with four, sit ahead of him. That’s elite company, and he has arrived there at speed.
Rohit previously held India’s fastest T20I hundred, a 35-ball blitz against Sri Lanka in Indore in 2017. That innings has long been a reference point for Indian power-hitting. Abhishek sliced five balls off it.
The scary part? He has gone even quicker in domestic cricket. In 2024, playing for Punjab against Meghalaya, he thumped a 28-ball hundred in a domestic T20, a hint that this eruption in Delhi was no one-off flash.
Records will keep being broken in this format. Boundaries will shrink, bats will evolve, scoring rates will rise. But some nights still cut through the noise.
This was one of them – a 30-ball thunderclap that may force India’s selectors to redraw their T20 plans around a left-hander who suddenly looks built for the game’s fastest lane.
