India, Jan. 22 -- By now you must be used to watching Abhishek Sharma go through his pre-batting ritual of flicking the ball between his hands with his eyes peeled to it. The 'see-ball, hit-ball' theory possibly can't be distilled into that astonishing strike rate of 190 without this ritual.

More confounding, though, is how he achieves that momentum with very few unorthodox shots. In a world where batting has grown to be infuriatingly complex, Abhishek debunks the myth that one needs to be improvising shots to stay ahead of the bowlers. And he has been at it for nearly two years now.

On the heels of a stupendous 35-ball 84 against New Zealand in the first T20I at Nagpur, Sharma wasn't kidding anyone with the simplicity of his approach t...