IPL 2025: Effortless, exquisite and effective - the story of Abhishek Sharma’s monstrous 141

Abhishek Sharma is pragmatism disguised as insouciance — easy on the eye and not for the faint-hearted. And when he gets going, he leaves everyone, fans and opponents alike, speechless.

When a prized racehorse drops back to an uneasily common canter, discomfort reverberates through the stable. Abhishek Sharma’s sluggish start in the ongoing season of the IPL wasn’t too different.

With just 51 runs from his first five games, Abhishek’s stutters scarily derailed the ‘Travishek’ juggernaut and, by extension, poked holes in the aura of invincibility around SRH in the PowerPlay.

Naturally, when the day came for Abhishek to hit back, he did so with a ruthless calmness, barging into the record books along the way. With a dollop of luck in the mix, he struck an imperious 55-ball 141 against Punjab Kings to help SRH return to winning ways on Saturday.

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That thunderstorm underlined why he is often looked at as the prototype of this renewed explosive route the format is taking and immediately took fans back to another ridiculously sublime T20 ton – 135 (54 balls) – in India colours this time, against England. His wagon wheel for this innings showed his comfort through the off side, accessing the fence through cover all the way until midwicket with fair ease. Against the Kings, Abhishek needed to unlock the other half of the ground, making most of the lack of personnel from the point to the backward square leg area.

“I never play anything behind the wicket, I was trying a few shots because I wanted to invent a few shots because of the size and the bounce on this wicket,” he said after the win against PBKS.

Any batter with stuttering form like Abhishek’s would normally take the cautious approach, especially after being fortunate enough to have seen the umpire signal a no-ball to cut short Yash Thakur and the Kings’ celebrations of the prized scalp. But Abhishek is not just any batter. He took that as a sign of divine intervention and walloped the free hit over square leg with an effortless flick of the wrists.