An Oddsworth Opinion
The number behind Ishan Kishan's record T20I year for India
Ishan Kishan now sits beside Sachin Tendulkar in India's record books. Tendulkar holds the most ODI runs by an Indian in a calendar year, and Kishan now holds the T20I equivalent, having passed Suryakumar Yadav's mark and reached 2,000 T20I runs as the third-fastest Indian to get there. His wider record tells you more about the batter behind that record. Across all men's T20 cricket over the last two years, Kishan has a strike rate of 175.7, against 132.9 for top-seven batters.
A run tally rewards a busy fixture list as well as skill, so his scoring rate and his average say more about the batter. Over those same two years his average is 38.26, against 24.02 for top-seven batters. He scores far faster than the field and still makes more runs before he is out.
How fast does Ishan Kishan score?
Kishan bats like a left-hander who treats the powerplay as his to win. He picks the length early, clears the front leg and takes on the fast bowlers from the first over. The West Indies series caught him at his most brutal, with 30 from 10 balls at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in a fifth T20I that ended without a result.
Career average 31.7Not out
Where our ratings place him
Our ratings make Kishan the sixth-best T20 batter in men's cricket, out of 204, worth 5.31 runs a match more than an average player. That puts him near the top of a side our ratings already rank first among men's T20 teams. His form did dip, with 1 and 0 in two innings against New Zealand. He answered in the fifth T20I with a fifty brought up by a six off Mitchell Santner, helped by a third-umpire call that overturned Finn Allen's boundary catch.
Where should Ishan Kishan bat for India?
At the top, and nowhere else. Across two years of men's T20 cricket, a strike rate this far ahead of top-seven batters, with an average to match, is worth more to India than any calendar-year tally, and opening gives him the most balls in the powerplay to use it.
The two failures against New Zealand show that a batter scoring this fast will have short days. Over two years, his long days have more than covered them. Keep him opening, and judge his next series by how quickly he scores.