ROLLING WITH THE PUNCHES

Gill & Pant navigate tricky phase with aplomb to set up platform for India on Day 2

- GOMESH S

AT this point it has become a regular sight in Indian cricket: Rishabh Pant and Shubman Gill chatting in the middle of the pitch between balls/overs before ending it with a double tap on their bats and a double punch of their gloves. They would then go back to their respective ends and continue with the game.

It is a ritual for Pant more than Gill. They did a lot of it during the Chennai Test against Bangladesh where both of them scored centuries in the second innings. So much so that Gill had to tell Pant not to hit his bat too hard because it was a bit old and he wanted to preserve it. "If he didn't middle it (the tapping of bats) while in the middle, he would say, 'no, let's do it again'," Gill had said at the time in Chennai. The 19,000 fans who turned up at the Wankhede Stadium on Saturday saw a lot more of it in the first hour and a half of play.

It all began when Pant planted his front foot and drove Ajaz Patel on the very first ball of the day down the ground for four. He didn't just stop there. Pant repeated the same thing and did it better on the second delivery to get the same result. Four balls later, India had 12 runs on the board from the over with another boundary coming through the third man region. All from Pant's bat.