Shikhar Dhawan silenced his critics with a sublime half-century (and still going strong at the time of writing) in the first ODI against the West Indies, on Friday, at the Queen’s Park Oval, Port of Spain.
Shikhar Dhawan Shattered MS Dhoni’s Record
Dhawan, who is leading the side in the absence of the rested Rohit Sharma, was under the pump by critics and the so-called “experts” after his fidgety-seeming tour of England – where in the three ODIs he recorded scores of 31*, 9, and 1 – where he had looked rusty – it’s not to forget that Dhawan only plays the ODI format for India and hence doesn’t get a consistent game-time regularly at the international level.
But, four days after the England series, Dhawan was back to his Gabbar form as he notched up a fifty against the West Indies in what was largely a chanceless innings.
With this, Dhawan created a new record in Indian cricket, going past the likes of MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma and Mohammad Azharuddin. Aged 36 years and 229 days, Dhawan is now the oldest Indian skipper to hit an ODI fifty.
Renowned statistician Kausthub Gudipati took to Twitter to highlight this record made by the left-handed opener Shikhar Dhawan.
Oldest Indian captain to score a fifty in men’s ODIs:
36y 229d – Shikhar Dhawan TODAY
36y 120d – Mohammad Azharuddin in 1999
35y 225d – Sunil Gavaskar in 1985
35y 108d – MS Dhoni in 2016
35y 73d – Rohit Sharma in 2022
Oldest Indian captain to score a fifty in men’s ODIs:
36y 229d – Shikhar Dhawan TODAY
36y 120d – Mohammad Azharuddin in 1999
35y 225d – Sunil Gavaskar in 1985
35y 108d – MS Dhoni in 2016
35y 73d – Rohit Sharma in 2022#WIvIND— Kausthub Gudipati (@kaustats) July 22, 2022
In fact, while some “experts” have questioned Shikhar Dhawan’s place in the ODI eleven, the southpaw has been in brilliant form in recent years – only that his ODI hits have been underlooked amid the euphoria of T20 cricket and the talks of Test cricket.
Since the end of the 2019 World Cup, Dhawan has scored 918 runs at an average of 51 – among Indian batsmen with over 500 runs in this period, only KL Rahul (54) has a better average than Dhawan.
Today, Dhawan led from the front with the bat in hand. He took down Alzarri Joseph right in the first over with a couple of boundaries and then a six in the fifth, and then dovetailed well with Shubman Gill as both stroked a flurry of boundaries and notched up their respective fifties.
Whether it was the pace of Joseph, the movement of Romario Shepherd or the medium pace of Kyle Mayers or the left-arm orthodox tricky of Gudakesh Motie – Dhawan dominated all of them with his attacking shots and had the West Indies fielders frustrated with his quick running between the wickets. And his tempo didn’t change even after Shubman Gill’s wicket and even as Shreyas Iyer batted sedately.
At the time of writing, he’s batting on 80* off 82 balls having struck 10 fours and 2 sixes and is coursing toward a likely century.
