Pant’s on fire: Rudraneil Sengupta on India’s fearless Test batter

Rishabh Pant is setting new records; his strike rate is audacious. With his wild-card style and victory somersaults, he is the maverick Indian cricket needs.

Who is India’s most successful Test batter today?

Pant during the Test series against England this week. (AFP)

If not for his exuberant twin centuries in India’s first Test against England this week, Rishabh Pant might not have been the most obvious answer to that question. Yet, it is him.

This compact bundle of fast-twitch muscle fibre with a maverick batting style that can be deceptively technical or totally outrageous, but is always defined by a sense of freedom and joy, stands a mile apart from all other Indian batters.

Since his debut in 2018, Pant has scored 3,200 runs at an average of nearly 45 and a strike rate just above 74. That’s better than the now-retired Virat Kohli, who, with 2,140 runs, comes in second (others such as KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Rohit Sharma all have aggregates far lower than 2,000 runs).

Pant’s strike rate is audacious too (everyone else in the top five has a strike rate in the 40s). What a joy to see the 27-year-old storm the stage as he is doing.

If the Test series in England proves anything, it is this: India’s new Test generation is packed with fantastic batting talent, and Kohli and Sharma’s retirements have helped, not hurt, the team, by allowing this next generation to blossom.

Yashasvi Jaiswal, Gill and Rahul all proved they have what it takes to achieve true Test greatness: the temperament and technique. If Pant was doing his uniquely destructive and freewheeling dance at one end, Jaiswal, Gill and Rahul were the epitome of poise and classical correctness, marked by one gorgeous drive after another.

All sport thrives on such diversity. It is Bharatnatyam meets Breaking.

Pant announced his batting prowess soon after making his Test debut, when he became the first Indian wicketkeeper to score a century in Australia, in January 2019. His career-changing knock came in the Sydney Test in the 2020-21 Border Gavaskar Trophy series, where he not only helped India survive the final day and earn a draw, but hit back with a rapid, roaring 97 off 118 balls.

Then he outdid himself: in the next Test on the infamous pitch at The Gabba, he led a highly depleted Indian squad to victory with a frenzied, unbeaten 89 on the final day of the Test, to overcome the Aussie total, in a match that went down as one of the most improbable chases in Test cricket history.

Now, Pant is truly building his legacy. The twin centuries have made him the first Indian and only the second wicketkeeper in the world (after Andy Flower) to score centuries in both innings of a Test in England.

His match aggregate of 252 (134 and 118) is the highest by any Indian wicketkeeper in a Test. His four Test hundreds in England bring him at par with Sachin Tendulkar and Dilip Vengsarkar, and behind only Rahul Dravid (six), when it comes to Indian centurions in England. It is possible he will not only equal Dravid’s record by the end of the series, but surpass it.

A less-important but very Pant statistic is that the nine sixes he hit in the second innings also equals the record for most sixes in an innings by any batter in England (putting him at par with Andrew Flintoff and Ben Stokes on this front).

There are few things more seductive in cricket than the combination of superb skill and a maverick attitude and, in this, Pant follows in the footsteps of giants such as Viv Richards (swaggering onto the field chewing gum, a rakishly angled cap instead of a helmet on his head), Shoaib Akhtar (a run-up that started near the boundary, long hair flying, a missile of a delivery, and Akhtar wheeling away in “airplane” celebration) and Steve Smith (all Chaplinesque twitches and ticks, but one of the greatest batting techniques in the history of the game).

Pant brings with him his nutty rolling-and-tumbling scoop shot, brings up his century with a one-handed six (in the first innings in the first Test), does backflips to celebrate milestones, steps out to hit the most ferocious bowlers like their reputations mean nothing, and smiles impishly through it all.

“It is hard for us to understand the mindset,” Rahul told reporters, after the first Test, “but you let Rishabh Pant be Rishabh Pant. There is obviously… a lot of thought behind the outrageous shots he plays.”

Pant is just the maverick Indian cricket needs.

(To reach Rudraneil Sengupta with feedback, email rudraneil@gmail.com)