True grit, Pant style helps India add crucial runs

Rishabh Pant, despite a toe fracture, bravely batted to support India, adding crucial runs before being ruled out of the series due to injury.

Kolkata: The notifications dropping in your phone in the morning, claiming Rishabh Pant has been ruled out of the series, weren’t entirely untrue. He was, but not without giving this series a parting shot, a final dance.

India's Rishabh Pant returned to the field, albeit with a limp, and posted a half century as India reached 358 all out in the first innings in Manchester. (PTI)

The odds of it alone were huge since it’s anatomically difficult to bat on one good leg. A toe fracture can be numbed with injections and sedatives but that foot still has to be slipped into a cricket boot before walking out to a field. We are talking about a lot of discomfort, if not acute pain if the sedatives wear off. But Pant has survived a near-fatal motor accident, so the spectre of this pain probably didn’t bog him. He was ready for the dance.

So as Pant emerged from the dressing room and slowly walked down the stairs, a shocked Old Trafford stood up in awe and applauded. Six down for 314, there was still a lot to play for but India were probably not aware how to go about it. With Pant, it’s usually cue for uncoordinated mayhem. But even Pant probably didn’t know what he could or couldn’t attempt. With that toe out of action, the reverse ramp that got him here in the first place was out of question. And probably a few more shots. But that’s not the point Pant was out to make.

This was about being a team man, about making that 10th wicket matter, even if for a few runs or a few overs. It is why Malcolm Marshall is remembered for batting one-hand at Headingley in 1984, Steve Waugh for risking deep vein thrombosis at Oval in 2001, Graeme Smith for batting with a broken hand at Sydney in 2008. They didn’t have to, but they did anyway. By now the world was well acquainted with images of the lump that had formed on his foot seconds after that shot against Woakes went awry and struck him. Scans confirmed fracture, and just after the day began the BCCI confirmed that Pant had made himself available to bat “as per team requirements”.

First two balls showed it was easier said than done. Going for a drive, Pant was beaten first up by Ben Stokes. And then again, this time the ball moving away from him. And when he was hit on the elbow by a back of a length ball, it was becoming clear Pant had been severely handicapped by way of repertoire of shots. When he managed to tuck away the ball, Pant wasn’t running, he was ambling. He wasn’t out in the middle for ones and twos anyway. But Pant was also not getting any bat under the ball. Stokes was targeting his right foot. Jofra Archer has started bowling considerably fuller. Cramping Pant was the ploy, and England were clearly succeeding in it.

Stokes had again pinned Pant on the pad but the ball was missing leg. Pant was getting fidgety. Archer sensed that and started pulling back his length, prompting Pant to throw the kitchen sink at the ball. He wasn’t connecting it well. The field was spread, Pant wasn’t taking singles, wickets were tumbling at the other end, the game was going nowhere. Till it happened.

A six to equal Virender Sehwag’s record of 90 over boundary hits, literally standing on one leg. After a yorker, Archer probably thought a slower bouncer would induce a false shot out of Pant. He couldn’t put any load on his right foot so swivelling through the shot was out of the question. So Pant opened up his hip and clobbered it over midwicket boundary.

Next over, Stokes bowled full but wide so Pant just stuck out the face of his bat without moving his front foot. The ball raced to the boundary. By the time his off stump was cleaned up by Archer, Pant had helped India add 35 runs. He now aggregates 479 runs, most by any wicketkeeper in a series in England, with a reminder that he couldn’t finish the series because of a broken foot.