Zero. Zero. Zero.
That’s the binary reality of Abhishek Sharma’s T20 World Cup 2026 campaign so far. Three games, twelve balls faced, and not a single run to his name. In any other era, this would be the part where the player quietly disappears into the domestic circuit to "work on his technique." But we don’t live in those eras anymore. We live in the age of "intent," where a scoreboard is apparently a legacy media format we’ve all agreed to stop reading.
Team India’s management sat before the press today and doubled down with the kind of practiced corporate stoicism usually reserved for tech CEOs explaining why their latest AI hardware just set a kitchen on fire. "There is absolutely no discussion in the dressing room about his spot," the statement went. It’s the ultimate gaslight. They’re telling us that three consecutive ducks aren't a failure of form, but a byproduct of a system that values the idea of aggression over the actual result of it.
It’s the Sunk Cost Fallacy played out on a cricket pitch.
The friction here isn't just about runs. It’s about the "Fearless Cricket" algorithm that India has been trying to install since the 2024 win. Abhishek is the poster child for this build. He’s the high-risk, high-reward asset who was supposed to disrupt the powerplay. But right now, the only thing he’s disrupting is India’s net run rate. The trade-off is clear: the management is willing to burn a hole in the opening slot for the sake of a "brand" of cricket that looks great in a PowerPoint presentation but leaves the middle order walking out in the second over.
Watch the replays. It’s the same story every time. A wild heave, a leaden-footed poke, a walk back to the dugout with that dazed look of a man who can’t believe the simulation isn't working.
The data nerds in the backroom are likely pointing at his "Control Percentage" or his "Expected Strike Rate." They’ll tell you he’s hitting the ball hard; it’s just going to the fielders. It’s the sports version of "the beta test had some bugs, but the architecture is sound." Meanwhile, the fans are paying five-figure sums for tickets to watch a guy get out before they’ve even finished putting mustard on their hot dogs.
There’s a specific kind of arrogance in this level of backing. It’s the belief that the system is smarter than the reality. Coach Gambhir and the selection committee have bet the house on the "modern" way—a way that dictates you never, ever slow down, even if you’re heading straight for a cliff. To drop Abhishek now would be to admit that the "intent" metric is flawed. It would be an admission that sometimes, just sometimes, you actually need to play the ball instead of the vibe.
So, the party line remains. No discussion. No doubt. No change.
The management is treating Abhishek like a software update that keeps crashing your OS. Instead of rolling it back to a stable version—say, a proven anchor who actually knows where his off-stump is—they’re insisting that we just need to keep rebooting until it magically works. It’s a bold strategy. It’s also a terrifyingly expensive one when you’re halfway through a World Cup and your opening partnership has the structural integrity of a wet napkin.
The internal logic is that if he clicks once, it pays for all the failures. But that’s not sports; that’s gambling. We’ve turned the national team into a laboratory for high-variance experiments. Abhishek isn’t a batsman right now; he’s a glitch in the pursuit of a perfect, aggressive data point.
The team keeps saying they aren't worried. They’re "backing his natural game." It’s the kind of jargon that sounds deep until you realize it’s just a shield against accountability. If he fails a fourth time, will the "no discussion" rule still hold? Or will the data finally suggest that three zeros added together still equal nothing?
We’ve reached a point where the process is more important than the points table. It’s a fascinating, infuriating pivot in Indian cricket. We used to be a nation that obsessed over averages. Now, we’re a nation that obsesses over the vibe of the strike rate, even when the strike rate is mathematically undefined because the denominator is zero.
How many more times can we watch a man swing at ghosts before we admit the ghosts are winning?