Rishabh Pant finds himself in no man's land and he needs to be given the long rope
For nearly two years, Rishabh Pant paid the price of being a great talent for Delhi as one of the senior players didn’t want the youngster to hog the limelight.
And recently, one of the most prominent faces of the Delhi selection committee told Sportskeeda that Rishabh Pant was deliberately kept out of the team because of this problem. But who can stop a talent?
Rishabh Pant burst into the scene after some terrific performances in the domestic scenario and in his second season as a middle-order batsman, the southpaw smashed a triple hundred against Maharashtra and immediately got into the national reckoning by scoring the fastest century of just 48 deliveries in the Ranji Trophy.
And within two years, he was even made captain of the Delhi team apart from which he cracked the second-fastest T20 century from 32 deliveries. There was no stopping Pant from thereon, but three years down the line, he sees himself being associated with a phrase - ‘na ghar ka ghat ka’.
Rishabh Pant needs to be backed a lot more
Ask anyone who knows about the Indian cricket team] and they will tell you how much could be invested in Rishabh Pant for the youngster to become an established star. Right from Sachin Tendulkar, who hailed Rishabh Pant’s knock against a defunct IPL team Gujarat Lions at Kotla three seasons ago as one of the best in IPL, to former captain and BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, everyone seems to like him except the Indian selectors and team management.
Last year, when the selectors picked the team for the 2019 World Cup, Rishabh Pant wasn’t even considered but he was in the standby list and was inducted into the team later due to an injury to opener Shikhar Dhawan. He was made to bat at No. 4 in place of Vijay Shankar till India were knocked out of the tournament in the semifinal game against New Zealand.
Eventually, it turned out that the 2019 World Cup game against New Zealand was the last international appearance for MS Dhoni, who developed a soft-corner for Rishabh Pant for his sheer talent. So much so that Dhoni is also convinced that the left-hander would be the man who would replace him in the Indian team.
However, the Indian team management kept experimenting and the latest find is KL Rahul. As Shreyas Iyer’s self-proclaimed No.4 slot belongs to him and thus telling the world to shut up, Rishabh Pant is not a preferred choice as Dhoni’s replacement, Rahul is.
Where does the talented southpaw go now?
In Tests too, the southpaw is only preferred if the conditions are not so challenging for the wicket-keeper, otherwise, Wriddhaman Saha is the first choice.
So what happens to Rishabh Pant? After showing so much talent, he is still not settled in the playing XI. We had talents like this in the past. Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma became big stars because their captains backed them.
Can anyone imagine why Ganguly is the most popular captain and not MS Dhoni? Because Ganguly backed his players to the hilt. Dhoni still had his strong likes and dislikes and was surely instrumental in giving confidence to Rohit Sharma. But who is going to back Rishabh Pant in this Indian team?
The talented left-hander, who can single-handedly take on any bowling attack and decimate it, is still struggling. When Tendulkar was on the threshold of retiring, Virat Kohli was groomed to take over the mantle. Who is going to take over Kohli’s mantle?
Yes, murmurs are that Rohit should be given the job of handling the T20 captaincy and take the load of captaining in all three formats of the game from Kohli. But we need to push a big talent like Rishabh Pant to reach the next big stage. That is because he is a genuine match-winner, hope Dada is listening!