India opener Abhishek Sharma is happy he took the stairs and not the elevator to the national team like some of his 2018 Under-19 World Cup team-mates - Shubman Gill and Prithvi Shaw, for example - had, saying he wouldn't have "learned some things" if that had been the case.

"There have been ups and downs," Abhishek said at the end of the Asia Cup , where he was the Player of the Tournament. "Some players get in easily. Some come in after some difficulty. But I feel this [domestic grind] was necessary. If I had made it quicker as a [national team] player, I wouldn't have learned some things."

While Shaw was fast-tracked to the national team, making his Test debut in 2018 itself, Gill broke through in early 2019. For Abhishek, the turning point came only after the pandemic, in 2021,

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