Double treat: Cricketers with centuries in consecutive T20 innings
The Indian Premier League, in its many years of existence, has seen many records being made and broken. One such record that Shikhar Dhawan made in Delhi Capital’s recent match against the Kings XI Punjab was becoming the first cricket player in the cash-rich league to score two consecutive centuries. Dhawan, opening the batting for his team, scored 106 runs off 61 deliveries and smacking 12 fours and 3 sixes.
In his previous outing, where Shikhar Dhawan scored the first of the two centuries, he guided his team to a 5-wicket win against Chennai Super Kings, by scoring 101 runs in 58 balls, hitting as many as 14 fours and one six in the process. While batting in both these matches, he looked to be in complete control and made the bowlers bowl where he wanted to. All through his innings, he respected the good deliveries, and on the others, he made sure that the ball was delivered across the boundary. Dhawan looked to be batting on a completely different pitch when compared to his teammates, who looked to be struggling.
Who are the other cricketers in the list?
There have been instances of cricketers doing this in other T20 tournaments across the globe, and Dhawan is the 9th player to join this elite list. When we look at T20 cricket as a whole, the explosive Australian opening batsman David Warner was the first player to achieve this feat, way back in the year 2011, while playing in the Champions League T20 tournament.
Ishan Kishan and Unmukt Chand are the other Indians in this list, who scored their consecutive centuries in the Indian domestic tournament, called the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in the year 2019 and 2013 respectively.
Other players, who have achieved this rare feat, showing excellent displays of batting in the shortest form of cricket, are Luke Wright and Michael Klinger, who did this in the T20 Blast 2014 and 2015. Kevin Pietersen, too, while playing in the 2015 season of the Ram Slam T20 in South Africa, scored two consecutive tons. In the year 2018, Marco Marias in the Africa T20 Cup and Reeza Hendricks in the Mzansi Super League also made it to the record books for achieving this feat.
