‘They’re the guys who'll go from ball one’: Batting coach Rathour explains Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya's roles

India and England will be locking horns in a five-match T20I series which begins on Friday. All five matches will be played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

Indian batting coach Vikram Rathour said that the upcoming T20I series against England will be utilised by the team's think tank to figure out what else would be required to be done ahead of the T20 World Cup which is scheduled to be held in India later this year.

Rishabh Pant (L) and Hardik Pandya (R) (HT Collage)

India and England will be locking horns in a five-match T20I series which begins on Friday. All five matches will be played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

Rathour also spoke about the role of Rishabh Pant who returned to the T20I set up after a year’s gap. He wasn’t included in the squad that travelled to Australia and KL Rahul had donned the keeping gloves.

“KL has done really well as a wicketkeeper-batsman. He has been a superb cricketer, he has batted really well, he has kept reasonably well. Now Rishabh [Pant] (is) back in form and doing well, let's see how it goes. Once this situation comes, what the team management is looking to do, that'll happen on the day of the game and how this series goes,” said Rathour told Cricinfo.

On being asked if Pant and Hardik Pandya would be given free hand to attack from ball one, Rathour said, “Yeah, that will depend. If both of them are playing and if you get a good start, so they are the guys who will go from ball one. Those are the guys who are capable of doing that. That's the discussion we have been having: what the team requires at that point.”

“If your team requires you to score 12 an over you should be able to do that, and if your team requires you to get 6 runs an over and win the game, you should be able to do that as well. So, you need to be able to adapt to both situations, and that is what a good game-plan is,” he added.