Railways’ Ashutosh Sharma created history today (October 17), breaking the record for the fastest T20 fifty by an Indian in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy match against Arunachal Pradesh.

Batting first, Railways put up a mammoth total of 246-5 in their 20 overs with wicketkeeper Upendra Yadav scoring an unbeaten century at a strike in excess of 200.

It’s rare that an individual hundred in a T20 innings gets overshadowed, but that was the case today. Ashutosh came in to bat at No.6 with the team score reading 131-4 from 15 overs. The next five overs produced utter chaos.

Railways added 115 in the last five overs, with Ashutosh scoring 53 off them, from just 12 balls. In the process, he broke Yuvraj Singh’s long-standing record of the fastest T20 fifty by an Indian which he had set in the famous 2007 T20 World Cup game against England where he hit Stuart Broad for six sixes in an over.

Ashutosh’s 11-ball fifty is also the second-fastest T20 fifty ever, with Dipendra Singh Airee’s unbreakable nine-ball fifty, which he scored last month in the Asian Games, being the fastest.

In his knock, Ashutosh hit eight sixes and one four. Apart from the 12th delivery he faced where he was dismissed, only two of the other 11 balls that Ashutosh faced didn’t go for a boundary.

The 25-year-old Ashutosh has not been a regular in the domestic circuit. Having made his T20 debut way back at the start of 2018, this was just his 10th T20 game. From nine innings, he has scored 289 runs at an average of 32.11 and a strike rate of 181.76.

Hailing from Madhya Pradesh, for whom he last played in 2019, Ashutosh has switched sides to Railways this year. In fact, this was just his second match, and his first batting innings for Railways.

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