A right-handed wicketkeeper taught himself to bat left-handed and made history
Shikhar Dhawan writes with his right hand and arrived at his Delhi club as a wicketkeeper. He learned to bat left-handed instead, and in March 2013 he hit the fastest century ever made on Test debut, reaching three figures in 85 balls against Australia and finishing on 187.
Born in Delhi on 5 December 1985, Dhawan trained from the age of 12 under coach Tarak Sinha, who produced a dozen international cricketers. Runs piled up early: 755 in nine innings for Delhi's under-16s, then top scorer at the 2004 Under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh with 505 runs, three centuries and the player of the tournament award. He led Delhi's run-scoring in his first Ranji Trophy season, outscoring seasoned teammates.
The senior call took years. He made his one-day debut against Australia in October 2010 at Visakhapatnam, struggled, and slipped back to domestic cricket, where he hammered 177 and 155 in the same Irani Cup final in 2011. His form swung wildly; on an India A tour of the West Indies in 2012 he failed to pass fifty once. In August 2013 he scored 248 from 150 balls for India A against South Africa A, then the second-highest individual score in List A cricket.
His record in major tournaments stands out. He was the leading run-scorer and player of the tournament at the 2013 Champions Trophy, and India's top scorer at the 2015 World Cup. No batter with over 1,000 runs in ICC one-day tournaments can match his average there of 65.15. His Test debut innings of 187 remains the highest by an Indian on debut.
Other landmarks followed: he became the first Indian to score a hundred in his 100th one-day international, against South Africa in Johannesburg, and in June 2018 reached three figures against Afghanistan before the first lunch break of a Test. Dhawan retired from all cricket on 24 August 2024.
Source: Shikhar Dhawan
