Rishabh Pant silenced his critics in grand style by slamming the second fastest century in the history of the game as Delhi hammered Himachal Pradesh by 10 wickets in a Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 zonal tournament match at Feroz Shah Kotla, New Delhi.
Pant shattered the record books by reaching to his century in just 32 balls and went to hit 116 off 38 balls in an innings laced with 12 sixes and 8 fours.
Pant scored at a mind-boggling strike rate of 305.26. He literally toyed with the Himachal Pradesh bowlers, hitting sixes for fun – a performance that will highly please the Delhi Daredevils, the franchise which retained the dashing left-hander for IPL 2018.
The fastest T20 hundred belongs to Chris Gayle, who scored 175 in IPL 2013 playing Royal Challengers Bangalore. He had reached the three figures in 30 balls.
Pant may have fallen short off the world record by a whisker but he did became the fastest Indian to score a T20 hundred, bettering Rohit Sharma’s 35-ball ton barely a month ago Sri Lanka. Rohit’s century is also the joint fastest international ton with South Africa’s David Miller.
Pant and Gambhir knocked off the 145-run target in just 11.4 overs, scoring at a run rate of almost 14 an over.
Gambhir (30 off 33) remained a mere spectator at the non-striker’s end as the the young wicket-keeper batsman, who was recently sacked as the T20 skipper, made a mockery of the sorry looking Himachal Pradesh bowling attack.
Opening bowler, Dheeraj Kumar went for 39 run in his 2 overs and Abhinay Singh was slammed for 41 in 2 overs.
Earlier, batting first, HP scored 144 for 8 in their allotted 20 overs. Delhi captain Pradeep Sangwan was the most impressive with the ball, picking up 2 wickets for 39 runs.