South Africa series will be do-or-die for Abhishek Sharma: Aakash Chopra

After having a stunning IPL 2024, Abhishek Sharma earned his maiden international call-up in the series against Zimbabwe n July. Since then, the youngster has played eight T20I games, scoring only 159 runs. In the recently concluded Emerging Asia Cup, he played a couple of good knocks but nothing extraordinary, which has put his spot in the Indian team in doubt.

Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal will miss the T20I series against South Africa due to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. In their absence, Abhishek will be opening the innings with Sanju Samson. Analysing the combination, former cricketer Aakash Chopra reckons that Abhishek is yet to make his mark in international cricket.

He believes that the upcoming series against South Africa could prove to be a "do-or-die" affair for Abhishek, as Jaiswal and Gill will be available for the next T20I series against England. In such a scenario, the 24-year-old will be dropped from the squad in case he fails to get going against the Proteas.

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“I think India have two or three big questions. The pressure will be on Abhishek Sharma and a little bit on Sanju Samson, although Sanju scored a hundred in the last match. So I am not going to say that there is any pressure on Sanju,” Chopra said on his YouTube channel.

“However, since Yashasvi (Jaiswal) will come and Shubman Gill will come at some stage, you feel you should score a lot of runs whenever you get a chance to open. So it's important for him but it's do or die for Abhishek Sharma because after this when the England T20I series will be played at home, you will definitely be dropped if you don't score runs here,” he added.

Notably, Abhishek scored a century against Zimbabwe earlier in the year but since then, he has struggled heavily, scoring 49 runs in last four games.