English
New Delhi: India suddenly find themselves way behind South Africa in their T20 International series and the manner in which the two sides have approached the series have made it quite clear as to which side has done its homework better. With two matches of the five out of the way, India still have a blank on the Win column and that isn’t a pretty place to be, especially if you are leading the side and need to show credentials of being an able captain, not just for now but for the future as well. Rishabh Pant is on the hot seat and it doesn’t seem like he’s too comfortable there.
Leading a side and keeping wickets, thinking about bowling and fielding changes and also the match situation and the opposition, all at one go, is not the easiest of jobs and let’s be fair, not everyone is MS Dhoni.
That said, Pant has frequently been touted as the next captain of India (in some formats, at least) so one would expect him to be thrown into the deep end, as he has been now. This is where he needs to show some maturity, but doesn’t always.
The second T20 International at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack saw Pant, once again, falling prey to his own exuberance and extravagance, even as full points should be given to the bowler, Keshav Maharaj, for having induced such largesse.
Pant was waiting for the slower bowlers to come to the fore, on a track that was showing quite a bit of help for the faster ones. But given that Maharaj isn’t quite the bowler that he faces every week, surely there was some cause for a little caution.
Not with Pant. He went cavorting down the pitch even as the left-arm spinner smartly threw one wide of the off-stump. Pant found himself between a rock and a hard place – if he left the ball, a stumping was very much a possibility, bit at the same time, he had committed himself to such a line that playing with the middle of the bat was not possible.
So, he played what he does frequently – a wild slash that steepled into the Cuttack sky and then landed safely in the hands of the sweeper on the off-side.
Not for the first time (or the last) we saw Pant trudging back to the dugout with a disgusted expression, muttering to himself. But no one else was to be blamed, as so often is the case with him.
Pant needs to mature, and fast. He can be a game-changer if everything goes well, but that crazy hoick is not one of his weapons. On the contrary, it is now a weapon for his rivals, one that he has advertised to well. The sooner he forgets this process and sticks to his strengths, the better it will be for him and the side.
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