Rishabh Pant became the only player to achieve this unique feat in the history of Test cricket
All sorts of record were created and broken throughout the England-India series and Rishabh Pant also managed to get his name in the record books. Rishabh Pant is the only player in the history of Test cricket who scored his debut runs and debut hundred with a six, which shows the fearless attitude that he carries.
Rishabh Pant has finally proved what he is capable of. It wasn't a great series for Pant before the last innings of the last Test and he was under a lot of pressure when he came out to bat in that innings.
With only 48 runs in his first 5 innings, he definitely disappointed the management who had high expectations from the talented youngster. He was finding it difficult to get going in the English Test conditions, looking confused and couldn't get himself going in 2 of his first 5 innings. Thrice he got a decent start, but because of the extreme ways he was approaching his innings, he was unable to convert those into anything meaningful for his side. He was either smashing the ball too hard or blocking everything that was coming his way.
He was also not able to display his best work behind the wickets. He conceded 70 byes in the last 2 Test matches which is not a good figure for any wicket keeper. He was not solely responsible for all these extras though as there was simply unnatural movement and bounce on the pitch. There were also times when the Indian bowlers were directionless on some rare occasions despite bowling superbly throughout the series which exasperated the situation more. Considering everything, this was still a significant number and could not be ignored given the nature of the match. In fact, many experts pointed out the fact that he had conceded more runs from byes (76) than he scored runs with his bat in the series (48).
With the poor performances in both the departments of the game, it looked like Rishabh Pant threw away the great opportunity that he was given. If he would not have played the authoritative innings of 114 runs in the last match of the series then it would have become very tough for him to retain his position in the team.
This innings established the fact that Rishabh Pant can channelize all the negativity around him into a brilliant performance. We all can remember the IPL 2018 game between Sunrisers Hyderabad VS Delhi Daredevils at Feroz Shah Kotla where Rishabh Pant scored some crucial runs after the early dismissals of Shreyas Iyer & Harsh Patel. In both the cases, it was Pant's fault. He was angry with himself and was constantly cursing himself. But then he calmed himself and only a few overs later he took out all that anger on the best bowling line up in the IPL. He went on to score an unbeaten 128 runs off 63 balls, the highest score of the tournament.
It was good for Rishabh Pant that he was able to finish the Test series on a positive note. This attitude will surely allow Pant to create more such records in the future.