If it is Test cricket in old blight and white, Rishabh Pant, catching England bowlers by the screw of his neck is a distinct possibility. After the first century at the Oval in London in 2018, the Birmingham blockbuster has come up with 146.
The first day was more or less cloudy – there were fleeting moments of a bright sky – of the Edgbaston Test, the always belligerent Indian southpaw, Pant deployed the bat to finish off the home attack that included masters of swing and seam – James Anderson and Stuart Broad together taking more than 1200 Test wickets, wannabe pacer Matthew Potts, game-changer Ben Stokes and more recently left-arm finger spin hero, Jack Leach.
Pant thumped each one of them with a sword and smashed three-figure knocks off just 111 balls with small boundaries (4s) and four big (6s). In more than three-and-a-half hours, he turned the rescheduled fifth Test of last year’s Pataudi Trophy in favor of the visiting team led by Jasprit Bumrah.
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In form of India Head coach Rahul Dravid described England’s “bright and positive cricket” against New Zealand, as it was “one or two wickets away from being potentially close to losing a Test match”, in his own way of employing Pant, who used the willow. were distinctive, appears to have reversed the test after beating their team by 98 for 5 (Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari, Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer was sent indoors by Anderson and Potts) on 320 and eventually 416 in the first innings.
It was Pant’s fifth Test match century, third against England and second in England. In the fourth innings of The Oval Test in September 2018, he announced his entry into international cricket as the most dangerous customer. He then scored 114 runs in 146 balls with the help of 15 x 4 and four sixes.
Thereafter, he played a career-best unbeaten 159 (189b, 15x4s, 1×6) in the drawn Fourth Test at Sydney in January 2019. He then made his first home Test at Motera, Ahmedabad, when most of the batsmen from both sides came together. Cropper on a suspicious pitch. Amazingly his 101 here came in 118 balls with 13 x 4 and two sixes. And in the third innings of the third Test against South Africa at Newlands in Cape Town, he scored an unbeaten 100 off 139 balls with a 6×4 and four sixes.
The major change in one of his last four centuries at Edgbaston was that his strike rate touched a high of 131.53 compared to 78.08 at The Oval, 84.13 at Sydney, 85.59 at Motera and 71.54 at Cape Town.
Perhaps another difference was that he took little caution until he crossed the three-figure mark. Kiran More, who played 49 Test matches between 1986 and 1993 and worked with Pant on wicketkeeping, praised the left-handed batsman for his brilliant innings.
,Bahuth Badiya knock..I think he has become mentally strong. When you have stroke players like him, he can be very dangerous, like Vivian Richards, Matthew Hayden and Virender Sehwag. They may have had bad patches, but like Brian Lara, they will keep going. There are batsmen who have done very well in Test cricket, but the kind of innings that Pant has played, people will remember him.”
Pant revealed at a press conference later in the day that he bowls, not a bowler, and does not look at the scoreboard. “It’s the right way to play, each ball on its own merit. It’s not a good thing to look at the scoreboard in a Test match, you can do that in an ODI and a Twenty20. But in a Test match it’s dangerous. Take a chance, he might get out. But he can change the course of matches and that’s what he has done. Pant studies the game well, and has been a street-smart cricketer since his early days.
“He has been in international cricket for four years, and has learned a lot. England bowled a lot at the stumps. He played fast bowlers close to his body and spinners away from his body. When he defended, he did it very close to his body. It was a great knock, a great knock. The good thing is that all the Indian wicketkeepers are doing well. KS Bharat, Ishaan Kishan, Dinesh Karthik and Sanju Samson.
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What sets Pant apart from others is his scoring rate, which is more than four runs per over. Since his debut and after 30 Tests (before the start of the Edgbaston Test and between wicketkeepers), he averages 40.85, slightly less than South Africa’s Quinton de Kock (45.53), who retired from multi-day Test cricket. Taken, Pakistan’s Mohammad Rizwan (43.96), New Zealand’s Tom Blundell (41.75), and Bangladesh’s Liton Das (44.86) in terms of runs scored (since his debut), Pant leads the stumpers with 2066 runs.
Pant has time and again proved to his well-wishers and critics that he can be counted on to deliver goods when chips are short. Along with another sly batsman in Ravindra Jadeja, he amassed 222 runs for the team, which thwarted England’s attack. He scored 146 runs in four Test matches and seven innings in England last year, the same number of runs he scored in a single innings at Edgbaston!
Left-handed players, as they walk, are a great sight to behold. The only difference between Pant is that he is brutal; There is no half way solution with that. Anderson’s step-out off-drive and shot square off the wicket and his other methods of hitting the ball can be quite frustrating for young bowlers. But Pant is the only way who knows how to fire with the first salvo. More said: Players like Rishabh Pant will keep Test cricket alive.
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