Indian skipper Rohit Sharma displayed no mercy towards Afghanistan's bowlers and dispatched their deliveries all around the ground during the ninth match of the ICC World Cup 2023 at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on Wednesday.
Capitalizing on the powerplay, Sharma executed lofted shots, achieving his half-century in just 30 balls.
In this remarkable performance, he managed to hit four maximums, etching his name in the annals of cricket history as the batter with the highest number of sixes in the game.
The 36-year-old has now totalled an impressive 555 maximums in only 473 innings, surpassing the West Indies' legendary Chris Gayle, who amassed 553 sixes in 551 innings.
The 'Hitman' boasted 77 sixes in Test cricket, 296 in ODIs, and 182 in T20I cricket. Notably, he holds the record of being the fastest batter to reach 550 sixes in international cricket.
However, in ODI cricket, Rohit is ranked third in the list of players with the most sixes. Pakistan's Shahid Afridi (351 sixes) and Gayle (331 sixes) are the only two players to have more maximums than the 36-year-old in the 50-over format.
It must be noted that batting first, Afghanistan set a 273-run target for India courtesy of a 121-run partnership between their skipper Hashmatullah Shahidi and Azmatullah Omarzai with the former contributing 80 runs, and the latter 62.
Jasprit Bumrah was the pick of the bowlers for the home side with his fantastic 4-39 spell in 10 overs while all-rounder Hardik Pandya was the second highest wicket-taker with 2 scalps to his name.
By the time this story was filed, India were batting 125-0 in just 14 overs and there seem to be nothing stopping the dominating opening duo of the Blues from chasing the target down.
Rohit Sharma 88* and Ishan Kishan 30* were still at the crease.
Playing XIs
India: Rohit Sharma (c), Ishan Kishan, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj
Afghanistan: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Ibrahim Zadran, Rahmat Shah, Hashmatullah Shahidi (c), Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi, Azmatullah Omarzai, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Naveen-ul-Haq, Fazalhaq Farooqi
- Rohit Sharma