Indian all-rounders Shivam Dube and Hardik Pandya on Wednesday set new milestones in T20I cricket during their team’s 2026 T20 World Cup Group A match against the Netherlands in Ahmedabad. Dube recorded a career-best T20I score of 66 against the Netherlands, surpassing his last two best scores.
He had scored an unbeaten 63 against Afghanistan in 2024, and bettered that with a knock of 65 against New Zealand earlier this year when the Black Caps toured India.
Shivam Dube, Hardik Pandya set notable records
His score of 66 against the Dutch on Wednesday is also the highest by an Indian batter in T20 World Cups among batters who have batted at No.5 or below.
Hardik Pandya had scored 63 runs off 33 balls against England in the 2022 T20 World Cup, whereas Yuvraj Singh had amassed 58 runs off 16 balls against the same opposition in 2007. This is also Shivam Dube’s maiden half-century in a T20 World Cup match.
Hardik Pandya, on the other hand, achieved a major milestone during the match against the Netherlands. The Baroda all-rounder reached the 6000-run mark in T20 cricket, and also became the first Indian cricketer to achieve the double feat of scoring 6000 runs and taking 200 wickets in the shortest format.
On Wednesday, the 32-year-old scored 30 runs from 21 balls against the Dutch, smashing three sixes. He had registered a half-century against Namibia a couple of matches ago, amassing 52 runs from 28 balls. That knock consisted of four fours and as many sixes.
Overall, Hardik Pandya has played 322 T20s and has scored 5978 runs. As far as his bowling is concerned, he has taken 221 wickets with the best bowling figures of 5/36.
Coming back to this match, India rode on a strong middle-order display to post 193/6 from 20 overs. Apart from Dube and Hardik, Tilak Varma (31) and Suryakumar Yadav (34) scored valuable runs. At the time of writing this report, the Netherlands were 85/2 in the 12th over.
The Men in Blue have secured their spot in the Super Eight stage of the T20 World Cup, and are in Group 1 along with the West Indies, South Africa and Zimbabwe. India will take on South Africa in their first Super Eight match in Ahmedabad on 22 February.
