New Delhi: When the man sporting a twirling moustache and a
big smile, Shikhar Dhawan walks out to bat against Pakistan in a
‘dead-rubber’ match at Edgbaston on Saturday, he will be facing his
biggest test till date.
An Indo-Pak match is like no other match and even though the stakes
aren’t very high, India would like Dhawan to fire all guns blazing.
Dhawan also has the opportunity to score three successive ODI centuries.
On return to the ODI side for nearly two years, Dhawan scored a
stroke-filled 114 against South Africa in Cardiff last Thursday and on
Tuesday at The Oval he smashed an unbeaten 102 off 107 balls to guide
India to an eight-wicket win over West Indies that took them into the
semi-finals of the ICC Champions Trophy.
Scoring two consecutive centuries is no rare occurrence. In ODI
history, 78 times have batsmen achieved this; however, only four have
made it a hat-trick - Zaheer Abbas, Saeed Anwar, Herschelle Gibbs and AB
de Villiers.
Before Dhawan, eight Indian batsman have scored two straight ODI
centuries: Gautam Gambhir, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Sachin
Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
The last Indian batsman to find himself with the chance of scoring a hat-trick of ODI centuries was Kohli in 2012.
The most recent batsmen to find himself in that place was New Zealand opener
Martin Guptill, after he scored 103* and 189* against England in a short series before the Champions Trophy.
Pakistan’s strength lies in its bowling and India’s in its batting.
The in swingers and out swingers of Junaid Khan and Mohammad Irfan will test the mettle of Dhawan’s batting.
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