'PANT IS INTEGRAL PART OF T20 LINEUP'

Coach Dravid Not Worried By Wicketkeeper-Batsman's Lack Of Form; Terms Karthik, Pandya As India's 'Enforcers'

- Manuja Veerappa

Bengaluru: Three of the top four Indian batsmen in the series against South Africa, which ended in a stalemate on Sunday after rain washed out the decider, returned relatively cold bats.

Skipper Rishabh Pant (58 runs), Shreyas Iyer (94) and Ruturaj Gaikwad (96) were far from the top of their game, but head coach Rahul Dravid refused to read too much into their performances in the drawn series.

"We are not going to make kneejerk reaction on people just like that," Dravid insisted. "I don't like judging people after one series or one game. Everyone who got the opportunity here, deserved it. They earned it. In this format of the game, you are going to have some good and bad games."

Pant, in particular, has come in for some flak, given that the ICC T20 World Cup is around four months away. But if one thought the sword was hanging over the wicketkeeper-batsman's head, Dravid dispelled the theory.

"I just don't want to be (harsh). In the middle overs when you are asking people to play a slightly more attacking brand of cricket and looking to take the game on a little bit more, sometimes it is hard to judge based on two or three games," Dravid said before drawing attention towards Pant's form in the IPL this season.

The Delhi Capitals skipper scored 340 runs in 14 matches, including three half-centuries, at an overall strike rate of 151.79. "I think he had a pretty good IPL. It might not have looked good on average, but his strike rate was really good and he looked to move that up a little bit," Dravid said.