Why Rishabh Pant should focus more on wicket-keeping than sledging
On a first day Perth pitch, the Indian team selection proved to be a tactical blunder. Kohli and the Indian coaching staff completely failed to judge the nature of the pitch and went with the hype of it being an out and out fast and bouncy surface.
They packed the side with four fast bowlers and left out Ravindra Jadeja from the playing eleven. By lunch, the Indian team must have realized its folly and hence, one saw Kohli throwing the ball to the part-time off-spin of Hanuma Vihari, who promptly took a wicket and has already bowled more overs on the first day itself than he was expected to bowl in the entire match!
One shudders to think what if Rohit Sharma was not injured, and played this game instead of Vihari. Thanks to a quirk of fate, and not by design, the inclusion of Vihari in the team has arguably given India a semblance of control on the first day. Not to forget, his role in helping the over-rate, which could have been way worse with only the pacers to bowl all the overs.
With Australia four down and Shaun Marsh relatively new to the crease, Vihari induced an edge from him and Rishabh Pant fluffed a straightforward chance. This could prove quite expensive for India. After this reprieve, Marsh took Australia forward in the company of Travis Head, and the match started rapidly slipping out of India’s hands.
By the time Vihari finally managed to take Marsh’s wicket, thanks to a brilliant catch from Ajinkya Rahane, he had scored 24 more runs and had added 49 runs in the company of Travis Head, which could prove crucial in the context of the match.
Before this drop, Pant was seen to be extremely vocal behind the stumps, just the way he was in the first test. This has made him kind of a media darling, with cricket broadcasters sometimes letting the commentators remain silent and switching on the stump mike so that the TV viewers get to hear Pant’s ‘commentary’!
However, as Sanjay Manjrekar rightly observed, Pant went completely silent and barely spoke a word for a long time after that drop. This suggests that he started focusing more on his keeping than sledging. So, if this indeed is the case, it is in his and India’s best interests that he does the same for the rest of this match and even beyond that.
Being vocal behind stumps is fine only if that does not distract one from one’s primary job. For Pant, that primary job is keeping wickets tidily, and he should surely focus more on that rather than indulging in unnecessary sledging.