Rishabh Pant Faces Heat For Reckless Batting In Guwahati Test, Team India Clears Stance
India were in desperate need for a disciplined partnership when Rishabh Pant arrived at the crease. The stand-in skipper, however, departed while playing a high-risk shot.
India's stand-in skipper for the Guwahati Test, Rishabh Pant, has received a lot of flak for his poor shot selection against Marco Jansen in the first innings. Pant arrived in the middle when India desperately needed partnerships, but the wicket-keeper batter refrained from showing discipline from the start. For Pant, there was no other plan but to go the aerial route. Seeing the approach backfire, Pant was severely criticised for the reckless manner in which he got out. His India teammate Washington Sundar, however, feels the conversation would have been different had Pant managed to execute his plans successfully, as he did for India on multiple occasions before.
"On another day, the bowlers would have gone into the stands, and all of us would have appreciated and clapped. That's how it is. Sometimes you just have to back their plans and their skill sets as well," Washington, who top-scored for India with his 92-ball 48, said in the press conference after the conclusion of play on Day 3.
"Given the fact that they have shown a lot of proof and evidence in the past as well. I think it is just about them backing their skill sets. Obviously, execution didn't go the way we wanted," he added.
For South Africa, Marco Jansen was the wrecker-in-chief with the ball, picking a 5-wicket haul to decimate India's hopes of making a comeback in the series. The 6ft 8 inches tall bowler had kept it short of length, and the ball climbed on Pant, taking the edge into the keeper's gloves.
Marco Jansen Not Surprised By Rishabh Pant's Approach
Asked if he was surprised by Pant's selection of shot, Jansen replied: "It's not that things will always be going your way."
"So there are times where Rishabh Pant would have hit that one fifty rows back, straight back over my head and then we would be having a different conversation," Jansen was practical about winning the battle of execution.
Jansen had realised early into the Indian first innings that neither there was nip in the air nor off the surface movement, forcing him to try out bouncers which worked well for him on the third day.
Having taken South Africa close to 500 (489) with a superb 93 off 91 balls on day two, Jansen did the star turn with the ball too, by grabbing 6 for 48 in India's paltry first innings score of 201.
Out of his six victims, barring Kuldeep Yadav, the other five were out to short balls and he showed the Indian attack what plan B meant on an unhelpful track.
Courtesy IPL and other white ball assignments, Jansen has been a familiar Proteas player in the sub-continent but by his own admission, he has struggled to realise his full potential till the ongoing Test.
This is due to the nature of the tracks where he failed to get leg before and bowled due to the bounce he generated through his 6 feet 8 inch frame.
With PTI Inputs
India Cricket Team
South Africa Cricket Team
Rishabh Pant