Former India batter Suresh Raina believes Abhishek Sharma should look beyond T20 cricket and aim to play Test cricket. Abhishek’s T20I competitor for the opening slot, teenage sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, is being encouraged to play red-ball cricket. He is currently playing in the Duleep Trophy, where his team, East Zone, is contesting South Zone in the final at Chennai. However, Abhishek has confined himself only to white-ball cricket, largely T20s. He has not played any first-class game since February 2024. The Punjab player last played against Tamil Nadu at Salem.
To date, Abhishek has played 24 first-class games and has more than 1,000 runs at an average of 30.60. There is one century and five fifties against his name. Raina believes the 26-year-old, who scored a blistering match-winning fifty in the 2026 T20 World Cup final in March, should embrace red-ball cricket and try to represent the national side.
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“I feel Abhishek Sharma should play Test cricket. Vaibhav is very young. Does he want to play? What do his coaches think? These are questions. I feel he should play. Are the IPL owners and associations also thinking of this and putting Test cricket in players’ minds? Coaches also have a role here,” Raina said on Aakash Chopra’s YouTube channel.
Food for thought for sure!
Raina is quite right. After extraordinary T20I success at the start of his international career, Abhishek is lately struggling. On India’s UK tour in June-July, he struggled big time across seven games against Ireland and England. He got runs in a couple of matches, but he looked rattled, especially in England. Facing Jofra Archer and Josh Tongue, Abhishek looked to hit every ball out of the ground and that often got him out. Stepping away to cut on the offside didn’t work for him at all. So, maybe now is the time for him to embrace red-ball cricket. What it is going to do is that he is going to spend a lot of time in the middle. The restlessness will get out of his system. He will learn to be patient. His short selection will improve, which means he will be a better T20 player in future. If Abhishek starts taking red-ball cricket seriously, there is a very strong possibility that he is going to last much longer. His pure T20 approach is not going to do it, make no mistake.