Abhishek Sharma breaks the T20I century record with 30 balls

Abhishek Sharma reached a century off 30 balls against Afghanistan at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on 17 September 2026, making it the fastest T20 international hundred by any batter from an ICC Full-Member nation. He finished with 108 off 34 balls, hitting 9 fours and 11 sixes at a strike rate of 317.64.

India made 221 for 7, their highest T20I total against Afghanistan, and won by 127 runs to complete a 3–0 series sweep. The margin is secondary; the record is the story.

The record in context

Batter	Balls to century	Opponent	Date
Abhishek Sharma (IND)	30	Afghanistan	17 Sep 2026
Finn Allen (NZ)	33	South Africa	4 Mar 2026
Sikandar Raza (ZIM)	33	Gambia	23 Oct 2024
Rohit Sharma (IND)	35	Sri Lanka	22 Dec 2017
David Miller (SA)	35	Bangladesh	29 Oct 2017

The table shows Full-Member nations only. Two batters from associate nations have struck faster T20I hundreds — Sahil Chauhan of Estonia (27 balls vs Cyprus, June 2024) and Muhammad Fahad of Turkey (29 balls vs Bulgaria, 2025) — but neither faced a Test-playing attack. Sharma’s 30-ball mark is the quickest against a Full-Member opponent and the quickest by a Full-Member batter.

How the innings unfolded

The speed of the hundred obscures its shape. Sharma did not score uniformly across the innings; he accelerated into it.

Milestone	Balls faced	Runs at that point
50	16	50
100	30	100
Out	34	108

Sixteen balls to fifty, then only fourteen more to reach three figures. The second fifty came faster than the first, which is the signature of an innings that found its timing rather than starting with it.

Rashid Khan eventually dismissed him, caught at deep square leg for 108. By then the damage was done: India had passed 150 in the 11th over.

What the hundred required

A 30-ball century is not simply a fast innings. It demands that almost every ball faced either goes for a boundary or clears the rope entirely. Twenty of Sharma’s 34 balls did exactly that — 9 fours and 11 sixes. Only fourteen balls returned fewer than four runs, and several of those were dots that he chose not to swing at.

The boundary count tells you something about control. Eleven sixes in a T20I innings is emphatic, but nine fours alongside them shows he was also finding gaps through the infield rather than relying on one dimension. The balance is rarer than either skill on its own.

The match

India	221 for 7 (20 overs)
Afghanistan	94 all out (14 overs)
Result	India won by 127 runs
Venue	Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi
Date	17 September 2026
Series	India win 3–0

The 127-run margin is India’s largest T20I victory over Afghanistan, and 221 is their highest total against this opponent. Sanju Samson contributed 38 off 17 balls at the top; Shreyas Iyer added 29. But this was Sharma’s innings from the third over onward.

Where this sits in his year

Four days earlier, in the first T20I of this series, Sharma became the fastest Indian to 6,000 T20 runs. That milestone measured volume — runs accumulated across formats and competitions. This one measures intensity: how fast can the runs come when everything is working?

The two records answer different questions, but together they describe a batter who has been both prolific and explosive. One without the other would be incomplete.

What the record does not prove

Afghanistan fielded a depleted attack. Naveen-ul-Haq was absent; the bowling leaned heavily on Rashid Khan and Fazalhaq Farooqi. The Delhi pitch offered no assistance, and the match was a dead rubber with the series already decided.

None of that diminishes the record — you face the bowling in front of you, and Sharma faced it better than anyone from a Full-Member nation has faced any bowling in T20I history. But records set in low-stakes matches against weakened opposition carry an asterisk that context supplies even if the scorebook does not.

A 30-ball hundred in a World Cup knockout, or against Australia at full strength, would be a different achievement. This is the fastest on record. Whether it is the greatest is a question the record cannot answer.

The Indian record progression

Rohit Sharma’s 35-ball century against Sri Lanka at Indore in December 2017 stood for nearly nine years. Before that, no Indian had struck a T20I hundred faster than 40 balls.

Sharma’s 30 does not merely break the record; it moves it by five balls, which is a larger gap than the format usually allows. Records of this kind tend to fall by one or two balls at a time, not by an entire over. The margin suggests either that the previous record was beatable all along, or that Sharma played an innings of a different order.

What comes next

The series is over. The Asian Games begin in Japan within days, though the men’s cricket tournament is not part of it. Sharma’s next assignment is likely the home series against New Zealand in October.

The record will stand until someone beats it. That is how records work. What the 30 balls add to his case is evidence that the ceiling is higher than the scoreboard usually shows — and that when the pitch is flat and the pressure is low, he can find it.