Jos Buttler on Abhishek Sharma’s record-breaking hundred: ‘As clean a ball striking as I have ever seen’ | Cricket News

England captain Jos Buttler lavished high praise on India opener Abhishek Sharma after his spellbinding 54-ball 135 in a 150-run win in the fifth T20I at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Sunday. Buttler hailed the knock as one of the finest examples of “clean ball striking”.
Abhishek bolted his way through a quality English seam attack to India’s second-fastest T20I fifty and hundred, in 17 and 37 deliveries respectively while also dominating the boundary-hitting charts. Abhishek walloped 13 maximums, breaking the previous best of 10 sixes three Indian batters, including Rohit Sharma, Sanju Samson and Tilak Varma.
“Yeah, (we are) obviously disappointed (with the result), they (India) played a fantastic batting innings. I think credit to Abhishek Sharma, I thought that’s as clean a ball striking as I’ve seen, I thought he played fantastically well,” Buttler told the media.
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Buttler denied England were “shellshocked” from Abhishek’s onslaught on his bowlers but said there were only two options for his side — either to go boom or bust.“We always sit down and think what more could we have done or how we could have stopped him, but some days I think you have to give a lot of credit to the opposition, I thought he played brilliantly well,” Buttler said.
“Shellshocked’s not quite the word, I think. It can be difficult sometimes when a player gets on a roll and they play as well as he did,” Buttler said.
“Looking back at the last IPL, him and Travis Head were the same at the top of the order for Sunrisers (Hyderabad) and obviously he’s brought that into India.”
“He (Abhishek) played a brilliant innings and sometimes you want to credit the opposition. You always think of what more could you do, how could we get him out, how could we slow him down and, but yeah, credit to us for, you know, sticking in there and fighting back and keeping them down to 240 after the start they got,” Buttler said.
– With PTI inputs