CALM BEHIND THE STORM

The Innings At Old Trafford Showed Why Rishabh Pant,. All Of 24, Is Fast Maturing Into India’s Batting Mainstay.

- Arani Basu

The chunky bracelet and the necklace are part of Rishabh Pant’s fashion statement. He has grown up in an era in which Bollywood mega star Salman Khan flaunted a similar bracelet and made daredevilry look cool. For Pant, though, it’s not just a piece of in-your-face jewellery. It’s something that his parents had got him with a stone embedded in it to keep him calm and to help control his temper. It has stayed with him since his early teens.

On Sunday evening in Manchester, Pant, like he has been doing so often of late, brought a sense of calm into India’s batting, which has seen some superstars at the top going through choppy waters. Eventually, Pant finished off the chase with his quintessential hair-raising belligerence.

It’s ironical that Pant, at 24, put a stamp on his evolution as a batter at the same venue where he was labelled a reckless cricketer three years ago, when his slog-sweep off Mitchell Santner ended in the hands of Colin de Grandhomme at deep mid-wicket.

It didn’t matter that the top three had cracked under the pressure of a World Cup semifinal game. It didn’t matter that his 32 had steadied India’s chase for MS Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja to at least give it a shot.

‘Shot selection’ has been at the core of every discussion on Pant since then. Those who are close to Pant know how much he regretted hitting Santner against the wind that afternoon in Manchester. His carefree approach towards the game was perceived as a rather careless one by experts and people in charge at the time.