India are walking into the Super 8s of the T20 World Cup 2026 with a campaign that looks stable on the table – but the critics have still found a pressure point. It isn’t a captaincy call or a bowling worry. It is a top-order storyline that has become impossible to ignore: Abhishek Sharma, India’s designated tone-setter at the top of the order, has gone three innings without opening his account.
In a video shared by Star Sports, Abhishek Sharma has answered the loudest question around him – doing it in the only language an aggressor like him can afford during a World Cup: clarity. No reinvention, no apology tour, no softening of intent.
Abhishek Sharma doubles down on process
“I just enjoy my batting. I have left taking pressure two years ago because I feel that the process is in my hands. Practice and training are what I am doing, which I should always keep doing, and which will keep increasing gradually. I enjoy this thing, so there is no such pressure,” Abhishek Sharma said in the video.
The timing is the main tell. A run of three ducks doesn’t only invite criticism – it invites the far more dangerous thing for a high-impact opener like him: self-doubt. In T20 cricket, players like Abhishek are picked to take the hardest options early, when the fielders are up, and the ball is new. When it clicks, it changes matches in minutes. When it doesn’t, the scorecard looks brutal – and the noise tries to bully you into becoming a different batter.
Abhishek’s message is essentially a refusal to do that. He is saying the method stays, even if the outcome doesn’t come immediately. “Obviously, batters always face ups and downs. Sometimes there are runs in an innings, sometimes there are not, but I feel personally, I have to decide at a certain point in time that I have to play like this, have to play with such intent. I may or may not succeed in it, but I will not change my process and mindset,” said Abhishek Sharma.
The last line is the spine of the statement, because it doesn’t promise runs, it promises identity. And for a young opener playing his first T20 World Cup, that is often the real battle once the early failures stack up: whether you start chasing approval, or you keep backing the role that got you picked in the first place.
India’s support around him has been consistent, publicly and internally – the kind of backing teams give when they believe the role is bigger than a three-innings sample. Now, as the tournament moves into its sharpest phase, Abhishek has put in on record that if he’s going down, he is going down playing his game – not a diluted, safer version that leaves India with neither runs nor impact.
