India head coach Rahul Dravid has made a significant statement on the batting form of India’s first-choice wicket-keeper Rishabh Pant.
Pant was given the leadership role in the recently concluded five-match T20I series against South Africa as Rohit Sharma was rested and KL Rahul suffered an injury. He led the team to a 2-2 draw, but, could not make a significant contribution with the bat.
Pant managed to score only 58 runs in five innings at a strike rate of 105.
Dravid, however, cleared the air about his place in the T20I squad going further. Talking at the post-match media interaction Dravid said, “Personally, he would have liked to score a few more runs but it is not concerning him. Certainly, he is a very big part of our plans going ahead in the next few months.”
READ: Rishabh Pant gets better but has a long way to go as captain
Several experts have said that Pant’s position is not definite in the playing XI for the T20 World Cup, especially looking at his performances in the shortest format of the game. The fact that KL Rahul and Dinesh Karthik can also keep wickets, and their tremendous batting form in recent times has added further fuel to the debate.
Pant’s shot selection and the mannerism of getting out have specifically come under the scrutiny of cricket pundits.
Albeit, Dravid supported the stand-in skipper and said that it would not be right to judge him so based on a few matches.
“I just don’t want to be critical. In the middle overs, you need people to play a slightly attacking brand of cricket, to take the game on a little more. Sometimes it’s very hard to judge it based on two or three games.”
“In the process (of playing an attacking game), he might go wrong in a few games but he remains an integral part of our batting line-up with the power he has and the fact that he is a left-hander is important to us in the middle overs.”
Dravid also mentioned that the southpaw had a very good outing with the bat during the IPL and that should be kept in mind before making critical remarks. “I think he had a pretty good IPL in terms of strike rate even though it might not have looked good on averages. In IPL, he looked to move up a little bit (in terms of averages), and probably three years ago he was on those numbers. We are hoping that we can get those numbers from him at the international level.”
Pant scored 340 runs in the recently concluded IPL at a strike rate of more than 158.
Pant will not be a part of the T20I side against Ireland as he will be with the Test team for the one-off test match against England. It will be important to see how Pant performs in the limited-overs leg against England, later in the tour.
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.