Hazratullah Zazai 162*

Afghanistan v Ireland
Dehradun
2nd T20I
February 23

The Innings

2019 was a year when the expansion of T20I status to include all countries had the more jobsworthy of cricket’s statistical gatekeepers worrying about the sanctity of cricket’s treasured records being tarnished. But the game which saw the most new ground broken wasn’t between a pair countries who elicited the reaction, ‘do they really play cricket?’ and a flurry of furrowed brows as we all tried to work out if it really counted.

Instead it was the two greatest beneficiaries of cricket’s latest stilted attempts at global expansion that etched themselves into the record books. The highest T20 partnership, the most sixes in a T20I innings, and the highest team score were all knocked off one night in Dehradun, and at the heart of the carnage was the man who could become Afghan cricket’s first global batting superstar, Hazratullah Zazai.

Already the cricket world had had a taste, when Zazai smashed six sixes in a single over in a domestic T20 over four months prior. That had demonstrated his talent, his rare strength, the kind that makes his adulation of Chris Gayle seem something more like realistic admiration and that makes how he started out, learning watching TV, trying whatever and seeing what stuck without proper coaching, into a charming origin story rather than something that held him back.

Shortly after being dropped in the deep, attempting to smash a very wide half-volley back to Afghanistan, he was presented with another tempter, a full toss that would have been called wide had he left it. This time, instead of muscling it, he opted for timing, a half-swing and pose-hold perfectly bisecting the two off-side boundary riders, and he was back on his way.