Ashwin claimed that Indian team management knows Abhishek Sharma is undroppable.
The Indian team management has included Sooryavanshi in the T20I squad, but he was benched for the Afghanistan series and now the ongoing West Indies series. He got a couple of games for India in the Asian Games 2026 but has not been able to force his way into the main Indian XI.
He has three fifties in his last 10 T20I innings and has been backed because of his brilliance in the T20 World Cup 2026. Despite his inconsistent batting record in recent times, former India spinner R Ashwin says that Samson has done just enough to keep Vaibhav Sooryavanshi on the bench.
Ashwin also stated that the battle for the opener’s spot is between Samson and Sooryavanshi, as the team management knows that Abhishek cannot be dropped.
“I just feel Sanju is doing enough at the moment to keep Vaibhav out of the team. Unfortunately, Vaibhav should be given an opportunity. But what can we do? Such things happen in life. This battle between the two is going on because the Indian team management and everyone knows that Abhishek Sharma cannot be touched. Abhishek Sharma is an exceptional player. If his bat gets going, he always wins matches for India,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.
Ashwin went on to commend Abhishek, noting that the left-hander has been piling up runs on challenging tracks throughout the past two to three months.
“He is a fabulous player. He will keep learning little by little. And what I am seeing as a big positive is that he has been scoring runs on difficult wickets over the last two or three months. This tells me that his graph is moving upwards. He is not stagnating, nor is he going down. So, Abhishek Sharma is a fabulous player, and I have a lot of time for him. I always enjoy watching him play because of his style, grace, and timing. He makes it look so easy,” Ashwin added.
Abhishek has scored 110 runs in three matches at an average of 36.66 and a strike rate of 211.53, including one half-century in the ongoing T20I series.
Ashwin highlighted Abhishek’s adaptability in recent games, changing his batting style to suit the pitch and conditions, be it the Asian Games or the Indore pitch.
“Abhishek Sharma has shown me a lot of things over the last two months that demonstrate his adaptability. Even in Japan, the wicket was not that easy, but he batted really well. The same was true here in Indore. The wicket was not particularly easy, but he batted well,” Ashwin said.
Abhishek Sharma completed 2,000 runs in T20Is in the Indore game and now has 2,036 runs in 65 T20Is at an average of 32.83 and a strike rate of 195.95, registering 14 half-centuries and three centuries.