Yusuf Pathan, one of the cleanest strikers modern cricket has ever witnessed. After years of retirement, cricket fans still get goosebumps when they recall how he used to hoist the ball way above the sky for over boundaries.
Let’s dive deep into Pathan’s decorated career to find out his three best knocks for Team India. A surprising fact about his career is that the right-handed batter never scored any half-century or century for the Blue jersey. But in ODIs, the middle-order batter registered two centuries and three half centuries.
List of top 3 innings by Yusuf Pathan for Team India:
123* vs. New Zealand, 2010
A flamboyant innings by Yusuf Pathan against New Zealand in a One Day International match on December 7, 2010, in Bengaluru. In this match, Pathan went on to score an unbeaten 123-run innings against 96 deliveries. Apart from his batting masterclass, the Baroda-born took 3 wickets, displaying his spin bowling skills. He helped India to get rid of Scott Styris, Daniel Vettori, and Kyle Mills. During his batting duties, Yusuf scored 123* with seven 4s and seven 6s. Chasing a target of 316, India won the match by 5 wickets and 7 balls to spare.
105 vs South Africa, 2014
The match was mainly marked by Hashim Amla’s brilliant 116 not out, but Yusuf Pathan was about to successfully eliminate all the odds to snatch a win. His fighting 105-run innings contained eight 4s and eight 6s off 70 balls. India was chasing a target of 268. Under heavy weather, Centurion that evening was not an ideal place for batters to smash the ball everywhere on the ground. The rain-interrupted game concluded with the help of the DLS method, where the overs and target were revised. Apart from Parthiv Patel’s 38 runs, no other top-order batters stood tall in the match. During the closing hours, Pathan was almost brawling alone against South Africa.
59* vs Sri Lanka, 2009
Sri Lanka, in their home ground at Colombo, was absolutely bamboozled by Team India. Through a couple of centuries from Virendra Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh, India was riding high. Yusuf Pathan came late to the crease and did the rest of the task with precision. Maintaining a strike rate over 155, Pathan posted an unbeaten 59 off 38 deliveries. During his innings, he smacked four boundaries and 3 over boundaries, and India registered a total of 363 in their 50-over limit for 5 wickets. Sri Lanka managed to get only 216 before losing all of their 10 scalps.
