Rishabh Pant isn’t a blink-and-you-miss-it circus act, but you simply can’t take your eyes off him when he is on the cricket ground. Behind the stumps, he is a veritable motormouth, interspersing advice and tips to bowlers with hilarious one-liners bereft of foul language and malice. His sense of humour is earthy and relatable, and often elicits guffaws from opposition batters at whom smart comments are directed. He has quick hands, not quite as quicksilver as his hero and role model Mahendra Singh Dhoni but exceptionally rapid in their own right, and he has managed to strike a balance between the Dhoni school of wicketkeeping and his own brand, also steeped in unorthodoxy like the legendary Jharkhandi.
But it’s in front of the sticks that Pant is at his most entertaining. Or frustrating. Exhilarating. Or exasperating. Or all these at the same time. He cam make the most outlandish look ridiculously pedestrian, but he can also infuriate with an apparent disregard, if not disrespect, for game situations when he bats seemingly without a care in the world. Indian cricket is no stranger to players being sanctioned for perceived ‘irresponsible’ batting. If Kapil’s omission was a witch-hunt of sorts, as whispers have indicated, it was ‘beautifully’ couched with Sandeep Patil emerging as collateral damage. Kapil returned to the playing XI for the fourth Test in Chennai and graced the five-day game for another decade, while Patil didn’t don the white flannels ever again.
Kapil Dev is one of the more visible victims of this tack, dropped from the Kolkata Test against England in 1984 after holing out to long-on in the loss in the second Test at New Delhi’s Feroze Shah Kotla ground.
Perhaps, Pant was seized of the isolated overreactions to his first-innings misadventure when he tried to hit the cover off the cherry immediately after Sri Lanka summoned the second new ball and perished to the fourth ball of the first over, clattering Nuwantha into the deep field. Perhaps, he felt the need to convince himself, more than anyone else (he is, after all, the monologue king while batting, often advising or berating himself), that he could play the situation, that his game awareness was second to none, and that his discipline isn’t as fragile or tenuous was the world might believe. A more acceptable barometer when it comes to measuring rate of six-hitting is balls faced, which can then translate to balls per six. Talk about impact. Talk about destructive power. Talk about unchecked mayhem. Talk about game-changing influence. As India brace for eight Tests in the next seven months, including two in New Zealand, they will need Pant firing on all cylinders. He will continue to annoy and anger with rushes of blood that are such an integral part of his DNA that there is no way he can excise them totally from his system. But he will also turn on the heat, the power, the potential for damage that perhaps no one else in world cricket currently possesses.
The former India vice-captain got to that landmark in his 89th innings, a good 41 knocks faster than Gilchrist. Gilchrist’s 100 sixes came in 6578 deliveries, which is roughly a six every 65.78 balls; Pant needed only 4918 balls to get to that same destination, meaning he strikes a six more than 16 deliveries quicker than his Australian counterpart. Pant is the consummate professional but whether by accident or design, he is also the ultimate entertainer, lying flat on his back after playing a sweep for six or setting a field for himself when he is batting, like he convinced Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto into doing in the Chennai Test of September 2024.
Because it’s more than possible that several of these knocks didn’t extend beyond ten deliveries, on its own, that doesn’t mean too much.
Because why would you want to go into a Test match with one hand tied behind your back, in any case, no one in his senses will (or at least, should) seriously contemplate ‘benching’ Pant on disciplinary grounds. Because pant is the master of his own world and we all cricket-crazy investors are privileged enough to be allowed entry into that very private space, we must accept him for what he is, warts and all,. But while egos might still be as prevalent now as they were more than four decades ago, the chances of leaving out a star player or two on a whim are miniscule to non-existent in the social media-driven era where it is hardly fanciful to whip up public sentiment and support. Pant can’t be excepted from accountability – no one is bigger than the team, ever – but he can’t also be expected to be something he isn’t.