ICC World Cup 2019: Rishabh Pant powers into reckoning

Rishabh Pant has been called to India’s World Cup squad with Shikhar Dhawan getting injured.

Southampton Rishabh Pant gave the ball a mighty whack at the nets of the Rose Bowl on Thursday. So hard that when one straight drive returned to the net bowler—an English boy seemingly still in his teens—he let the ball race under his fingers and completed his follow-through by looking up at Pant, bewildered. That ball was fetched from the far reaches of the practice area by a limping Vijay Shankar.

India's Rishabh Pant shares a light moment with a teammate during a training session. (AP)

Shankar—who was hit on the toe by a Jasprit Bumrah yorker on Wednesday, which all but ruled him out of the next game against Afghanistan—walked a little and then broke into a jog which seemed to hurt him so he slowed down and walked again towards the ball and threw it back.

Then Shankar stayed put and watched the two batsmen doing their thing in the nets; one of Pant or Dinesh Karthik certain to replace him for the match on Saturday.

No panic

One way to read into the greatness of this Indian team is to observe just how unpanicked they are as a unit in this World Cup despite having lost three players to injuries (one of them permanently).

For a lesser side, or Indian teams of the past for that matter, such a situation would’ve been fatal to hopes of doing well in a cut-throat format. But Team India takes great solace in having reserve players in the 15-man squad who are just good as those in the playing 11, and greater comfort in the fact that someone as talented as Pant couldn’t even make it to the original list.

“We are not worried about the changes (to personnel),” Bumrah said, at the press conference on Thursday. “We’ve got a lot of faith in ourselves as a group, and we’ve got a good balance. The people who come in as replacements are also equally good, and they can take care of the situations they are thrown in to.”

With Mohammed Shami set to come in for the injured Bhuvneshwar Kumar and KL Rahul effectively ‘replacing’ Shikhar Dhawan at the top (he was in the 11 for the campaign opener on this very ground as a middle-order batsman), the only place left to fill on Saturday is that of Shankar’s. And it is a toss-up between the two stand-by wicketkeepers.

There’s been a lot of whispers around the Indian camp of Karthik deserving a go before Pant, due to him having 14 years of ODI experience more than Pant; and because he, and not Pant, was part of the original squad.

But the India think-tank will know that a firing Pant will possibly have more to offer in the middle-order than Karthik. Coach Ravi Shastri kept a close eye on the 21-year old at the nets in Southampton, even shifting position according to Pant’s movement from one net to the other (there are separate cages for throwdowns and proper bowlers).

Rahul No 4 again?

A decision has perhaps already been taken regarding the team for Saturday, given that India announced that they will not be training on the eve of the match.

Which, of course, gives the fans and the media a little less than 48 hours to speculate; and one of the more curious speculations was India dropping Rahul back down to No.4 to boost the middle-order and opening with Pant and Rohit Sharma to keep the left-right combination going.

Not born openers

It isn’t all that illogical if you really think about it. India’s three greatest opening batsmen in ODI cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Sharma, weren’t born openers either and all were promoted from the middle on a hunch. Pant hits the ball as hard as any of them and with time will learn to strike it as well as any of them.

Also, as an opener, he is assured an innings in every match and the security of a single position will only help Pant settle into a rhythm, something he hasn’t had in his nascent ODI career so far. In his four batting innings, he has walked in at numbers six, five, five and four respectively.

In one corner of the Rose Bowl on Thursday, Pant showed what he could do once he gets his hands and eyes in to facing a constant stream of balls. It was stroke-making at its most explosive and one feared that the roof of the net would give in to constant shelling. These were only net bowlers, of course.

But in Test cricket, where Pant has an assured spot and has cracked two hundreds and could’ve well cracked two more (out in the nineties) in his first 15 innings, he has made many a seasoned bowler seem just as paltry as the young boys he tormented on Thursday.