Last week, former India opening batter Shikhar Dhawan announced his retirement from all forms of the game. This means that he won’t even participate in the Indian T20 League from now on. The left-hander last played for India in late 2022. At the beginning of 2023, the Champions Trophy 2013 winner was dropped from the team. This meant that the Delhi player missed out on his first One Day World Cup at home.
Before this, the 167-ODI veteran played the 2015 (Australia & New Zealand) and 2019 (England & Wales) World Cups. Apart from this, the former India U19 player played two World T20 Cups in 2014 (Bangladesh) and 2016 (India). The 34-Test player retired with 6793 runs in ODIs with an average of 44.11 including 17 hundreds. Meanwhile, in this listicle, let’s have a look at five special records of Dhawan.
Five special records held by Shikhar Dhawan
- Only Player to win two back-to-back Golden Bat award
The left-hander played in two Champions Trophy editions (2013 and 2017). After the 2017, the tournament was scrapped, only to be brought back four years later. Meanwhile, the Golden Bat award is for the highest run getters during the tournament. In both editions, the Delhi player hit 363 and 338 runs respectively. He is the third highest run getter in the history of the tournament behind C. Gayle and M. Jayawardene.
- Fastest Test century by an Indian on debut
Dhawan made his Test debut in the third Test of the Border-Gavaskar series in 2013. He had replaced V. Sehwag in the playing XI. The left-hander made the most of his chance and scored an 85-ball century, fastest by an Indian. He ended up getting 187 runs and eventually helped India win the Test despite being hit for more than 400 runs and first day play abandoned due to rain.
- Sixth highest batting average among Indian top-order
Between 2010 to 2022, he played 167 ODIs. After this many games and despite lack of runs in his last few games, he ends up with sixth highest batting average (44.11) among the Indian top-order. He is only behind the likes of S. Tendulkar, V. Kohli, R. Sharma, etc.
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Second highest century partnerships
For most of his career, he opened the batting with R. Sharma, India’s second World T20 Cup winning captain after Dhoni. Meanwhile, both Sharma and Dhawan put together 18 century-plus run partnerships. They are only behind S. Tendulkar and S. Ganguly 21 hundred-plus run partnerships.
- Fifth fastest to reach 6000 ODI runs
Dhawan reached the 6000 ODI runs (ended up with 6793 runs) in just 140 innings. He is only behind the former South Africa Test captain, H. Amla, former India skipper V. Kohli, WTC 2021 winning captain, K. Williamson, and former Australia opening batter D. Warner.
