Shikhar Dhawan becomes the fastest Indian to score 2000 in ODI

He looks different and plays differently too…………….with mush up, he presents a raw picture ~ but plays refined shots and at times arrogant shots, hitting the ball all over the park.  He made his T20I debut against West Indies in June 2011 tour at Queen's Park Oval, under captaincy of Suresh Raina and opened along with wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel in which he scored 5 of 11 deliveries faced before being caught behind to keeper Andre Fletcher off captain Darren Sammy. 

It is Shikhar Dhawan – the scorecard of the match played at LC de Villiers Oval, Pretoria made a great reading- Murali Vijay 40 off 37; Cheteshwar Pujara 109 off 97 balls and in between Shikhar Dhawan 248 [yes Two hundred Forty Eight] in just 150 balls with 30 boundaries and 7 over it.  India A made 433 in 50 overs….  In his Test debut at Mohali, he made the fastest ton by a debutant and went on to become the highest by a debutant Indian. 

In between, he has fallen wayside and Critics have been questioning his existence while extolling Rohit Sharma all the time.  At Hyderabad yesterday, India had it easy – the scorecard reads : India 245 for 4 (Dhawan 91, Kohli 53) beat Sri Lanka 242 (Jayawardene 118, Dilshan 53, Yadav 4-53, Akshar 3-40) by six wickets The seven-wicket loss at Hyderabad surrenders the series to India, who have not only been untested in the three matches so far, but have also discovered potential gems from among their second-string players. Akshar Patel is perhaps chief among them, removing three batsmen through the middle overs, while Umesh Yadav struck at either end of the innings to earn a career-best haul of 4 for 53.

Indian batting has hit a peak (against this attack at least) as there two big landmarks today …. Virat Kohli reached 6000 ODI runs in 136 runs the fastest ever easily surpassing Viv Richards.  However, Hashim Amla, who currently has 4790 runs from only 95 ODI innings, looks all set to break Kohli's record. Dhawan who had earlier strugged for runs has completed 2000 runs in 48 innings the fastest by an Indian and the joint fifth-fastest ever, along with Viv Richards.

There are some surprises : the list is topped by Hashim Amla, then Zaheer Abbas, Kevin Pietersen, and IJL Trott – then Viv Richards and Shikhar Dhawan.  Remember this has nothing to do with strike rate, but with runs and innings.  The fastest 2000 among Indians is :

Player	Mat	Inns
S Dhawan	49	48
NS Sidhu	55	52
SC Ganguly	56	52
V Kohli	56	53
G Gambhir	61	61
MS Dhoni	70	62
R Dravid	70	63
V Sehwag	68	66
DB Vengsarkar	69	67
SR Tendulkar	73	70
VG Kambli	76	70
VVS Laxman	72	70
SK Raina	86	70

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

10^th Nov 2014.