CHENNAI: It is hard to understand what Rishabh Pant has been going through for a while.Make no mistake, since the lead-up to the World Cup, six months ago, he has been dividing opinions. For outsiders, Pant is too brash. For his teammates, Pant is the X-factor they all want to back. For his head coach, Pant is an exceptional talent who needs to understand his role. For the selectors, Pant is the heir apparent to MS Dhoni, one capable of serving India for long.
Amidst all this, Pant has been through testing times. It makes you even wonder from the outside as to how much pressure his young shoulders can take. He is still only 22, but is often burdened with unrealistic expectations. Many want him to play and keep wickets like a seasoned pro.
It isn’t his fault that Pant has been trusted with the job. In IPL and domestic cricket, he has shown that he is destined for bigger things in life. But in a world where facts often take a back seat and notion take the front, Pant has often been on the receiving end of many a brickbat.
Sunday’s ODI was his first since August 14. Since that one-dayer in Port of Spain, Pant lost his spot in the Test XI, and has played nine T20Is with an unbeaten 33 being his highest. He has been ridiculed for his at-time overenthusiastic DRS calls. He again set tongues wagging when he collected the ball before it crossed the stumps and denied the bowler a wicket. He’s missed catches which have seen his home crowd in Delhi chant “Dhoni” whenever his visual appeared on the giant screen. A week back in Thiruvanathapuram, after failing to hold on to a tough catch, he saw the crowd chant Sanju Samson’s name, much to the disapproval of captain Virat Kohli.
With all this as a backdrop, it wasn’t surprising to see Pant sum up the importance of his first ODI fifty, which he got to in Chennai on Sunday, in a very measured tone.“It’s very important. I was looking to improve every day, but not getting there. I am not saying that I got there, but I am just trying to improve. It’s my learning curve, and I’m thinking that I want to do whatever I can to get a good score on the board. In the end, I got runs.”
If other cities were reluctant to accept Pant, Chennai was going to be his trial by fire. It is a city in which Dhoni is omnipresent. Never mind that the adopted son of their soil has not played a match since the World Cup, there were t-shirts with Dhoni imprinted on the back, being sold more than that of Kohli. When Pant arrived in the 19th over and got off the mark off his sixth ball, there was even a mock cheer. Then the Chepauk crowd went silent for a while, before Pant found the fence off his 18th.
Contrary to popular belief, Pant has shown in the past that he can construct an innings in limited-over cricket. The situation he walked in would have been familiar, thanks to his stints with India A. It was this ability and his skill of reading the game that had impressed selectors.But in his brief time of wearing blue, Pant has seldom got the opportunity to bat for long, as he did on Sunday. While he did play some of his trademark power hits, all of them came when there was freedom to unleash those. “When we were kids, we would hear many saying, ‘Play the natural game’. But since I have played international games, I have realised that there is nothing called a natural game. You have to play according to the situation. A good player is one who can mould his game according to the team’s demand.”
That is what Pant did in the company of Shreyas Iyer. For a side that is over-reliant on their top-three, India needed their middle-order to do the heavy lifting. On a sluggish surface, Iyer and Pant gave India a reason to smile.
After the match, Pant was asked about what kept going through his mind in the recent months. He didn’t give a lucid answer, opting for the cliched “sticking to the process” response. But even in those banal words, he gave a glimpse of his now-maturing mental make-up. “You have to believe in yourself. It doesn’t matter what people say about you. At times, you will get runs. That might not happen on other days. But the process is always important.