Rishabh Pant in Test cricket is an experience. Savour it.
There is something about watching Rishabh Pant, especially in Test cricket. He provides viewers moments that no other batter can. There are batters who are more elegant, or more powerful, or with equally quick scoring rates. But none of them are Rishabh Pant. None of them can give you that simultaneous feeling of thrill, awe and dread that Pant does, when he gets to his century by charging down the track and hitting a six. And does it on Day 2 of a Test series in England.
In Test cricket, a Rishabh Pant innings is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You can either know what he's going to score off the next ball – or what shot he's going to play. But you can't know both. Not until the event is past.
Pant's seventh Test century broke several landmarks. It also meant India got to 471 in their first innings. One way of looking at it is, this is the lowest total for any team with three century-makers. The other way is, if it wasn't for Pant's 134, India's total would have been much lower and they would have been in some trouble. A third way of looking at it is with just wonder, because Pant did supremely Pant things during his stay.
Falling over paddle sweep against fast bowlers? Check. Nonchalantly audacious shots that don't come off, but still end up in no-man's land? Check. Nonchalantly audacious shots that do come off, and leave everyone's jaws on the floor? Check. Get to his fifty and century with shots that no one else would? Also check.
Nothing Pant does is ordinary, which is why you can't tear your eyes away when he's batting. He's so unconventional, you half expect him to come out to bat in beach shirt, bermudas, massive shades and a boombox. And yet, since his debut, India hasn't had a better batter than him in the games he's played.
It feels unseemly to measure Pant by numbers, but they do tell some compelling tales. India's first Test against England is Pant's 44th game. No Indian batter with at least 1000 runs averages more than Pant in the games he's featured in. No one has hit more centuries than the 7 he has. Lower the cut-off to 500 runs and Jaiswal's 43.55 is marginally ahead of Pant's 43.40 average - but Pant has almost four times the runs Jaiswal has.
Pant has 3082 runs in 44 Tests since his debut in 2018. Despite his missing more than a year of all cricket due to his horrific accident, the only Indian with more runs in this period is Virat Kohli, and he played in 55 Tests for his 3436 runs, and averaged 38.6, significantly lower than Pant.
With 7 centuries, Pant is already India's most prolific wicketkeeper-batter. His idol, MS Dhoni had only six Test hundreds, and he played in more than double the matches Pant has.
Pant has hit 79 sixes in Test cricket, going one past Dhoni there too. Only Virender Sehwag (90) and Rohit Sharma (88) have hit more in Test cricket for India. Who wants to bet that he won't be top of the list by the time this five-Test series is done?
That is the genius of Pant. He has churned out runs with consistency, while batting with almost carefree abandon.
It needed Sachin Tendulkar to tell us that even when Pant is being unconventional, he's actually batting to a plan. It should have been evident to anyone who saw Pant's scores. But sometimes the evident can be blurred in a whir of falling paddle sweeps.
Tendulkar wrote on social media, that 'Rishabh's falling paddle sweep is not accidental. It is intentional and extremely clever. Going down with the shot allows him to get under the ball and scoop it over leg slip with control.'
So while Pant might appear to be making merry on the ground, there is actually a proper method to all the madness. He is India's vice-captain, and suddenly finds himself as one of the seniors in a team in transition.
Before the Headingley Test, he joked that he was 'finally' a senior and that 'it felt good!'. But when he spoke seriously, he indicated that he wouldn't deviate from who he had been.
'See, it's an extra added responsibility, but at the same time, when you are in the middle of the ground, you're not thinking, 'Oh I'm the vice-captain. I'm the senior player. You're just a batsman, you're going to do your best and the game will take care of itself.'
Pant's best is rather special. And it's come off more often than you'd think. Savour it while it's there, because there isn't another like him.
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