Over the last year, Rishabh Pant has risen in prominence as a Test cricketer with his heroics in the tour to Australia making him a permanent starter in India’s playing XI.
With the Indian adamant on using a five-bowler strategy and playing with one batter less, the team is reliant on Pant’s batting to ensure the team gets big scores on the board.
Hence, his dismal performance in the second innings of the Johannesburg Test came as a big disappointment to Team India. The Indian wicket-keeper was dismissed for a duck by Kagiso Rabada.
However, more than his low score, it was the manner of his dismissal that attracted the fury of the cricket fraternity. On just the third ball of his innings, Pant attempted to smash Rabada on the front foot but ended up edging the delivery to the South African keeper behind the stumps.
Legendary Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar is among those to slam Pant for his shot. Gavaskar claimed that Pant’s shot would have made sense if he was batting at 30 or 40 and claimed he is not following the same approach with which he batted in Australia.
Talking on Star Sports, Gavaskar said, “It’s a valid question. This is something one could understand if Rishabh Pant had been batting on 30 and 40. This is something he had not done in Australia. There he applied himself, recognised that there will be hard times at the beginning when you come in to bat and then battling through the hard times, he got set and got to know how the pitch is. And then he played the big shots. That’s what he did in Australia.”
“This is something we saw against England, at the start of the series. When England came to India, he was jumping down the pitch and trying to hit James Anderson… he did that so well. But after that he seems to think that is the only way to play.
“That is not the way to play and I am pretty certain that in the change room, Rahul Dravid would have given him a hearing, or as they say in cricket, Dravid must have given him a ‘bamboo’,” added Gavaskar.
Talking about the match, South Africa need 122 runs to win the game while India are in search of eight wickets to seal a historic series victory.
Although, rain has played spoilsport so far and washed out the first two sessions.
