Rishabh Pant going through 'patch to forget, it's a nightmare': 'He's not regular in India's T20I team'
Rishabh Pant has endured a tough time in IPL 2025, scoring just 135 runs in 12 matches at an average of 12.27 and strike rate of 100.
Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) captain Rishabh Pant has had a horrid run in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 season. The franchise crashed out of the playoffs race on Monday after losing against SunRisers Hyderabad by six wickets at the Ekana. LSG have been hampered by injuries to their key bowlers such as Mayank Yadav and Mohsin Khan. However, one cannot deny that the biggest reason behind LSG's ouster is the lacklustre form of the southpaw Pant. Former India batter Aakash Chopra now reckons that Pant has to reassess his T20 game to come good in the shortest format of the game.
Having been bought for INR 27 crore in the mega auction, Pant has scored just 135 runs in 12 matches at an average of 12.27 and a strike rate of 100. He registered only one half-century and it came against the Chennai Super Kings. However, this knock went in vain as CSK registered a victory at the Ekana.
Pant, who isn't a regular in India's T20I side, was expected to set the IPL 2025 stage on fire to make a case for his inclusion in the T20 World Cup squad. The tournament is set to be played in India next year.
The left-handed batter managed just 7 runs off 6 balls against SunRisers Hyderabad as his poor form continued in the tournament. Aakash Chopra has now backed the southpaw to come good as nightmares always come to an end.
"Success might teach you a few things, but it is failure that gives you the lessons that actually change your mindset forever—and for good. So, he must have obviously thought about a lot of things regarding this particular season," Chopra said while speaking on JioStar.
"He's not a regular in the Indian T20 team either, so obviously, he wanted to make sure this was the big season—playing with a new franchise, building a good team together. It just hasn't turned out that way," he added.
'Nights are longer'
Aakash Chopra, who represented KKR in the inaugural season of the IPL said the need of the hour is for Pant to recognise what sort of game he wants to play in the shortest format and act accordingly.
Pant's scores this season are 0, 15, 2, 2, 21, 63, 3, 0, 4, 18, and 7. He has been dismissed for a single-digit score on seven occasions in the ongoing IPL season, which began on March 22.
“His own form, the lessons to be learned—whether you now want to approach T20 cricket differently, or decide, ‘This is the template I’m going to follow, and I’ll just learn to be patient’—because that’s what happens when you go through a bad patch. It feels like everything is going wrong," said Chopra.
"The nights are longer, the days even longer. And then you learn, and then you bounce back. That’s what all of us have done. There isn’t a human being—at least not a cricketer on this planet—who hasn’t gone through a bad patch. This was a patch to forget, a nightmare. But the good thing about nightmares is that eventually, you wake up—and they end,” he added.
