Seeking the right time to break free in T20Is
KOLKATA: Among the many versions of Rishabh Pant the batter, it is his T20 avatar that has often looked more circumspect. It’s got a bit to do with Pant’s career graph—making his debut as a carefree batter with raw wicketkeeping skills in 2017, then upgraded to the big league because India needed a Test stumper who could bat before being handed IPL leadership last year at 23. Compared to Tests where he gets away with a fair bit of extra aggression, Pant has had to mould his approach in IPL, and by extension in T20Is.
Pant’s IPL and international roles aren’t similar though. If playing for India means a moreor-less refined role of leading the slog-over batting, in IPL he, last season, became the captain who had to show the way. That meant the toning down of aggression. It took a toll on his IPL strike rate— from 173.6 in 2018 and 162.66 in 2019, it slumped to 128.52 in 2021. His transformation while playing for India too seemed more organic, reflecting a more mature Pant trying to play longer innings. Like in IPL, Pant stumbled here as well in terms of enforcing himself. Starts were slower, the strike wasn’t farmed enough, and eventually the pressure got to him.
Between a 42-ball 65* against West Indies in Providence in August 2019 and 52 at Eden Gardens on Friday, Pant didn’t have a fifty in 19 innings. Sample some of those innings in between—19 off 20 (vs SA in 2019) in Bengaluru, 6 off 9 (vs Ban in 2019) in Nagpur, 21 off 23 (vs Eng in 2021) in Ahmedabad, 12 off 19 (vs NZ in 2021) in Dubai and 4 off 6 (vs NZ in 2021) in Kolkata. Sure, some of his innings came in a final flourish and some others where Pant didn’t have to bat for long. But a recurring reminder was that not only have most of Pant’s lower scores come at home or in subcontinent conditions, he also has a better strike rate away (130.53) than at home (125.33). That hasn’t made his job easier.
There are bigger issues at play as well. With Suryakumar Yadav entering the fray and Virat Kohli once expressing his wish to open, India’s middle-order batting has been in flux in the last year or so.
“We can utilise him in a better way lower down the order, which can be really challenging as we don’t have many options of a left-hander in the middle-order,” batting coach Vikram Rathour said recently. That said Pant’s position—at No 4 or 5—in the T20I setup is more or less fixed. The criticism was that he often delayed the switch to attack mode. Eden Gardens thus saw a prompt change of pace as Pant announced his arrival by throwing his bat at a wide Roston Chase delivery, picking up a boundary through point.
A left-hander in the middle overs always tends to scramble up set bowling rhythms. With Pant and Venkatesh Iyer in the middle, it was a two-pronged attack for which West Indies were not prepared. If the mature part of Pant’s innings was his setting off on quick singles and twos by nudging and pushing the ball into the gaps, he offset it with some ridiculously aggressive hitting—pulling Kieron Pollard, flaying Sheldon Cottrell’s pace and whipping Jason Holder off his pads with a helicopter shot a la MS Dhoni. Pant’s attack shouldn’t make news. It still does because he’s been out attacking and then overcompensating, a narrative only Pant can correct with more runs, and benefit from the calmness it brings.
India’s future is inconceivable without Pant as wicketkeeper-batter, if not as a leader, although he is trying to stay level-headed.
“As an individual, I can’t think about whether I’ve to secure this place or that place,” he said in a virtual press conference on Friday. “I have to do whatever the team needs from me. It’s about improving each and every day.”
Not for the first time, Pant’s performance fitted his job description. While it may seem entirely on expected lines, even the most fluent of batters can’t achieve success without clarity of thought. For Pant, what works best is aggression—in his words, “see the ball, hit the ball.”