Senior cricket analyst Vikrant Gupta said on Sports Tak on July 24 that every team in world cricket has now identified Abhishek Sharma’s weakness in T20 cricket, and that the India opener is no longer batting the way that earned him a global reputation over the past two years.
🚨 EVERY TEAM HAS IDENTIFIED ABHISHEK SHARMA’S WEAKNESS IN T20 CRICKET – VIKRANT GUPTA 🤯
– Abhishek Sharma is no longer batting the way that earned him a reputation in world cricket over the past two years
– Whenever T20 cricket is discussed globally, Abhishek Sharma’s name… pic.twitter.com/sWyF8XJ8Yl
— Bhanu (@Bhanu_R780) July 24, 2026
Vikrant Gupta made these remarks on Sports Tak’s verified platforms on July 24. No official response from Abhishek Sharma or the BCCI has been made at time of publication.
“Every team has identified Abhishek Sharma’s weakness in T20 cricket.”
Vikrant Gupta, Sports Tak, July 24, 2026
The statement came one day after Abhishek scored 1 off 8 balls in India’s first T20I against Zimbabwe in Harare. He never looked comfortable on the crease and was caught at the deep boundary off Brad Evans. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi scored a maiden T20I fifty off 18 balls at the other end and won the match for India. Abhishek was a non-factor.
Vikrant Gupta is one of India’s most followed cricket analysts and the face of Sports Tak. He is not a casual observer of Abhishek’s career — he conducted an exclusive post-World Cup interview with Abhishek and Sanju Samson in March 2026 after India won the T20 World Cup title. His recent analysis of Indian cricket has consistently gone beyond surface-level comment. When he says every team, he is not reacting to one bad game in Harare.
This is also not the first time he has said it. During the T20 World Cup 2026 semi-final in March, he wrote on X:
“Abhishek Sharma has been a very very big letdown this World Cup. Don’t recall any batsman going from being an X factor in a format to being so helpless and clueless – peaked too soon perhaps.”
Vikrant Gupta, X (@vikrantgupta73), March 5, 2026
Four months later, he is saying the same thing. The language is now more precise — every team. Not some. Every team.
The evidence behind that assessment stretches further back than most coverage acknowledges. Abhishek’s 931 ICC T20I rating points at peak remain the highest in T20I history. At that stage, no team had a confirmed map of how to stop him. Then they started building one.
In November 2024, after Abhishek scored 7 and 4 in back-to-back T20Is against South Africa, both dismissed pulling short balls from Gerald Coetzee, Aakash Chopra issued a public warning: “They are going to bowl bouncers as soon as they see you. Give yourself a little time because the truth is that only once besides that century against Zimbabwe, you have batted till the third or fourth over.” That was nine months before Vikrant Gupta’s statement on July 24.
At the T20 World Cup 2026, the plan was fully executed across teams. Pakistan opened with off-spin in the powerplay and had Abhishek gone in two balls. The Netherlands deployed off-spinner Aryan Dutt and bowled him through the gate for another duck. Three consecutive zeros at a home World Cup. His tournament total was 89 runs across 7 innings at an average of 12.71. He made 52 off 21 in the final and India won the title, but the blueprint did not disappear. Against England in July 2026, he was removed by Adil Rashid in the fourth T20I before his fastest T20I fifty against England in the first match already felt like a distant memory. England won that series 4-0.
What the Blueprint Actually Looks Like
The documented plan has two parts. The first is off-spin early in the powerplay. Teams bowl back-of-a-length to deny Abhishek the room he needs to free his arms. He has scored only 3 sixes in 41 balls against off-spinners in the powerplay across T20Is. When he does go for the big shot, the timing is not there and the ball goes to the fielder positioned at the boundary for exactly that delivery. Pakistan, the Netherlands, and England all used this plan. All three times it worked.
The second part is the bouncer. A short ball on the leg side arriving early before Abhishek has settled, inviting the pull shot. Gerald Coetzee dismissed him this way in consecutive matches in South Africa in November 2024. Brad Evans dismissed him the same way in Harare on July 23. Same shot. Same result.
The two plans are complementary. Off-spin closes off the on-side. The bouncer closes off the leg side. Between them, every early-innings scoring option is either shut or trapped. Opposing captains are no longer guessing. They are executing a confirmed instruction.
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The real problem is not the technical weakness. Every analyst can document the off-spin plan and the short ball plan. But what being fully mapped does to a batter’s mind is where this gets genuinely dangerous.
Once every team follows the same blueprint, something changes in how a batter processes a delivery. He walks out knowing the plan that is coming. The bowler knows he knows. That shared knowledge creates a loop. Instead of reading each ball and reacting with instinct, which is how Abhishek played when he was at his best, he starts anticipating. He is thinking one step ahead of the bowler before the ball leaves the hand. That half-moment of hesitation between instinct and thought is exactly where the freedom disappears. From the outside it looks like a technical problem. From the inside it is a psychological trap. The batter is no longer playing the ball. He is playing the situation.
The players who come through this phase are the ones who find a way to make themselves unreadable again. A new starting position at the crease, a changed initial movement, anything that forces the bowler to solve a new problem rather than execute a memorised answer. That reinvention is the hardest thing in cricket because it asks you to change something that was once working perfectly. Until Abhishek finds that adjustment, every team will keep following the same instruction, because it keeps producing the same result.
He is 25. He won the T20 World Cup with India in 2026. This is not the end of his story. But right now, every bowler who walks in to face him carries a confirmed plan, and that plan is working. Vikrant Gupta did not say something new on July 24. He confirmed what the data has been showing for close to a year.
Sources:
- Vikrant Gupta, X (@vikrantgupta73), March 5, 2026
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