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While India are battling in the ODI World Cup for glory, the domestic stars have taken the field to play the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, from October 16-November 5. On Tuesday, October 17, one of these matches between Punjab and Andhra of Group C, saw the top order of the former completely decimate the Andhra bowlers.
Leading the charge with the bat was Abhishek Sharma, who opened the batting with a brilliant 112-run innings in 51 balls to give his team the perfect start to their batting. With nine fours and as many sixes to his name, the Andhra bowlers had no response to Abhishek's brilliant batting, as he took the score to 208-3 before losing his wicket.
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His innings included a 93-run partnership with Prabhsimran Singh, but the latter had just scored 24 runs in 21 balls. Then entered Anmolpreet Singh, who went on to score 87 runs in 26 balls, with 6 fours and 9 sixes to his name. This innings took his team's total to 275 in their first match of the competition. This is now the highest score ever by an Indian T20 team, breaking a record earlier set by Indian Premier League (IPL) side Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in 2013 against Pune Warriors India.
Abhishek's innings comes after the batter had a lean patch for the opener after his performance in the ACC Emerging Asia Cup, where India lost the final by 128 runs. In that match, he managed to score 61 runs and set up a good partnership with Sai Sudharsan during the chase of 353 runs, but was unable to lead the India A side to victory.
After Sudharsan lost his wicket, skipper Yash Dhull and Abhishek Sharma got the run chase back on track. Sharma got to his half-century. Sufiyan Muqeem broke the 52-run partnership for the third wicket. The southpaw scored 61 runs from 51 balls including five fours and one six.
Following this poor loss were subpar outings for the North Zone, where he crossed 30 runs on only one occasion in four matches. But his innings against Andhra took him to the next level.
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