Mumbai: When Rishabh Pant failed to find air or distance after holing out to long-off on the first ball after lunch on Day 2, the dismissal wasn’t quite ‘stupid, stupid, stupid’ territory, but there were those who would find fault in the left-hander not kicking on to bat Sri Lanka out of the match after the gains from the first session.
Pant knows all about it. Sunil Gavaskar schooled him on air for his lack of game awareness during the 2024 Melbourne Test match. He had been reprimanded by head coach Gautam Gambhir after a reckless dismissal in last year’s Guwahati Test match against South Africa.
Search for silver linings from Pant’s 89-ball 63 at Colombo, and there’s one quite easy to spot: the criticism hasn’t got to him. He is still the free-flowing risk-taker that has brought him laurels. About the brickbats, he’s learning to take them in his stride.
To those who were discomforted by Pant’s dismissal on Monday, it had a lot to do with the batter taking the aggressive option so early after a 40-minute interval. That’s not how anyone else plays Test cricket. One is told, Test cricket offers enough time to build and rebuild.
What Pant tries to do is break the mould. That’s how he gets his runs: by pulling off the unexpected against the opposition. That’s all he was trying when he attempted to lift Keshara Nuwantha over long-off early in the post-lunch session. It’s exactly the kind of shot he had employed in the previous over too – the last one before lunch – off Prabhat Jayasuriya and managed to clear long-on. Playing for lunch? There’s no such word in Pant’s lexicon.
Trusting his self-taught template, the Delhi batter doesn’t bide time while approaching milestones. Being dismissed in the 90s on seven occasions in his 52-Test career is a testament. That may be a statistical setback, but he still has 8 hundreds to show.
If there’s one gripe to pick over Pant’s dismissal in the first innings, it may be that he tried to clear the straight boundary against the off-spinner and not the left-arm spinner. Although he was still swinging with the turn, there was greater risk at play for the left-hander.
Pant would have taken mental notes but not because of the public rebukes. You can see that the player is trying to be a more in-control player. His innings here was also about self-restraint. He refrained from hitting against the turn, even with the ability to pull it off more often than not. When he returned to bat after retiring hurt on Day 1, India, on 307-6, still had work to do. He dug in, patiently waited for his first boundary for 22 balls.
Off the 23rd ball, he pulled Lahiru Kumara for a six way beyond the fine leg boundary, leaving a dent in the solar panels of the Sinhalese Sports Club ground. It did not matter to him that failing to execute a similar shot the previous day had left him bruised. While picking his moments to attack with care, when he sees an opportunity, he doesn’t hold back.
Pant’s whites are usually soiled. For he does not shy away from playing the falling sweeps, even if it is for a single. Simply because he has spotted a gap in the field and backs himself to play a stroke few others can. His first scoring shot off Jayasuriya on Day 2 was a reverse sweep because he knew he was outside the line while facing the left-arm spinner. That to Pant was a percentage stroke, just like strolling for a single to long off.
Pant plays a high-risk game. And won’t always succeed. But he continues to remain an original. And the good thing is, his daring is still intact.