Rishabh Pant’s fearless and entertaining style makes him a unique and exceptional player

It’s the morning of the fourth day, India’s lead decent without being intimidating. Off the seventh ball of the day, Shubman Gill trudges off disconsolately to the pavilion, chopping a lifting, incoming ball from Brydon Carse on to his stumps. India hadn’t just lost their captain, but also one of three centurions from the first innings. At 92 for three, they were ahead by 98, and not too many wickets away from a collapse — as subsequent events would prove.

Out walked a chunky, unprepossessing figure, triggering a frisson in the well-populated stands. In the first innings, he had uncorked a brilliant hundred of two parts — the first fifty came off 91 deliveries, his slowest to date.

Between 50 and 100, he needed just 55 balls, keeping his tryst with his eighth Test ton with a six. It wasn’t unexpected; like Virender Sehwag, he likes to herald a milestone with a flourish when almost everyone else will get there with a nurdled single, a scrambled brace.

Then again, Rishabh Pant isn’t ‘everyone else’. Thank goodness for that. Back to day four, a regular Monday until Pant made sure it wasn’t.

Early blood to England, India under pressure. Really? Clearly, Pant hadn’t been paying attention. There’s something about very early in his innings and a charge down the track to the fastest bowler in the opposition that is quintessentially Pant. In the first dig, he came haring the pitch to hammer his second ball, from England captain Ben Stokes, back past the bowler’s head for a searing, statement boundary. For a second, Stokes — himself of the free spirit — was startled. Needless evasive action was followed by an unchecked bout of laughter. Stokes couldn’t believe what he had just been subjected to. What’s this guy made of?

Back again to day four. Carse, his tail up after cleaning up Gill, came bounding in, fresh as a daisy, determined to drive home the advantage. Ball two to Pant, who again embraced the charge-and-bash routine. Perhaps he needs to do that to get the circulation doing, perhaps he must do it because he is desperate to get off the dreaded duck, perhaps he just likes it. Whatever. He matched Carse for speed, waiting nearly till the ball left the bowler’s hand before leaving his crease. Unlike in the first innings, there was neither shape nor control. As he threw his hands at the ball, it skewed off the outside edge and over the slips, down to vacant third man for four. Hello?

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Headingley woke up, if at all it had gone into a slumber after an early strike by a home bowler. The buzz was unmistakable. The revolving door was here, no one knew what was coming next. What came next was a manic passage of play, with Pant doing the most outrageous of things even by Pant standards. ‘Harakiri’ came to mind.

K.L. Rahul, his Zen-like partner, was flummoxed. England were hopeful, optimistic, convinced that a wicket was but a ball away. In the dressing-room, Karun Nair, the next man in and playing his first Test in more than eight years, must have felt his heart thudding against his chest, knowing that he was on a pair, perhaps believing that the next ball would usher his presence into the middle.

Pant heaved. He slogged. He charged. He went hard at the bowling. He walked across his stumps, attempting the most extravagant and ill-advised hoick to fine-leg, his stumps exposed, the stroke more suited to the final over of a T20 game than during an intense, potentially decisive passage of play.

Pure theatre

Then, in pure theatre that broadcasters salivate over and those watching on television can’t get enough of, Pant admonished himself. He spoke to himself, calmly, as if transported from his body, advising himself to play straight. He questioned himself about the need for extravagance. He tried to get himself to understand the gravity of the situation. The stump microphone isn’t everyone’s favourite but in this case, it threw up gold. Absolute gold. It provided a window to the extraordinary mind of an exceptional cricketer. Self-admonishment and self-advice worked, Pant became a more selective version of himself without sacrificing flair or entertainment or the wow factor. It made for magnificent viewing – on television, sure, but 100x magnified at the venue.

A second century of the match was almost inevitable once Pant spoke to Pant, once Pant heeded Pant. It was fascinating; every time Rahul was in his ears, Pant respectfully responded with ‘haanji’, then did what he wanted to do. It’s not that he didn’t respect his senior partner’s inputs, it’s just that he took them on board, fused them with his unique way of thinking and came up with solutions to questions England didn’t even think they had posed.

It takes guts and courage and bravery and self-belief and a certain bullheadedness to embrace the Pant way of thinking. It comes with the attendant risk of failure, of looking silly — ‘stupid, stupid, stupid’, anyone? — of being taken to the cleaners by even those who revel in his success when he pulls off a reverse ramp in a Test match against James Anderson, or who clubs a Mitchell Starc screamer over mid-wicket as if having a friendly net against a wannabe left-arm spinner. But Pant is not about bravado alone; he does have eight Test hundreds, the most by an Indian wicketkeeper, and averages in the mid-40s. There is great method to his inimitable madness, so to question his methodology, however exasperating it might appear at times, is a little out of place.

You just have to focus on the reactions when you utter the name/word ‘Pant’ to see what he triggers in teammate and opponent alike. Rahul seemed almost in awe while speaking of the man with whom he shared a 195-run partnership. “You just stand there and admire and sometimes scratch your head about the shot selection and the outrageous cricket that he plays,” Rahul, a stately Rolls Royce to the rollicking McLaren that Pant is, said the other day, trying his best to conceal the broad grin that reflected the joy in his heart.

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“He’s a unique, unique player and you just let him be. I’ve had a few partnerships with him, (including during) his first hundred in Oval (2018).

“We’ve batted together for a long period of time and he enjoys his cricket and that’s how he likes to express himself,” Rahul went on. “I just let him be and try and keep him as calm as I can. He obviously has a method to his batting which none of us in this room understand, but it seems to work for him.”

Pant, 27, is now the deputy to Gill, 25. A combined age of 52 makes this amongst the youngest leadership playing groups India have put out in recent memory but the good news is that these two men have played a lot of cricket together at various levels, are great friends off the field and share a terrific relationship which augurs well for the future. Pant has emphatically played his hand — he will respect the responsibility that comes with the vice-captaincy, but he won’t try to be anything other than what he is, because then he won’t be the Pant he can be.

More than numbers

Given cricket’s propensity to judge individuals by numbers, Pant is on to a great thing already, less than halfway through his international career. He has more Test hundreds in England than any other Indian apart from Rahul Dravid. Notice something there — India’s best technician and India’s most mercurial middle-order bat bunched together in an elite, exclusive club of two? Just goes to show that there are numerous ways to skin a cat. He is one of only two stumpers, after Andy Flower, to smack a hundred in both innings of the same Test. He is, simply, Rishabh Pant.

In the middle of all this, around the excitement and the hype and the encomiums, it’s easy to forget that he is only 27. That he is still a very, very young man, not just in life but in cricketing life too. He has been through so much already, including the career-threatening, life-threatening single-car accident of December 2022. That he has managed to retain his joie de vivre, that he has still stayed equanimous and generous and grateful for a second chance, is clear for everyone to see. Pant knows that not everyone is as blessed as he is; therefore, he believes, he must make the most of benevolence of the higher power, make every second count, stand out as an inspiration for others.

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Occasionally, the petulant child in him surfaces, like in the first innings at Headingley when Paul Reiffel legitimately turned down his entreaty to change the ball and Pant reacted by churlishly backhanding the ball along the ground to the mid-wicket fielder, his annoyance all too obvious. It was the boiling over of a frustration merited, but which shouldn’t have manifested in the way it did. For his indiscretion, he was slapped with a demerit point and given an official reprimand by Richie Richardson, the ICC match referee. Given that he is his best judge and his worst critic, Pant will tell himself, ‘Rishabh, woh theek nahi tha, waisa nahi karna tha’. And then immediately put all that behind him and get on with the job. After all, that’s what makes him what he is.

At the conclusion of a match in which more than 1,650 runs were scored at more than four an over, Stokes spoke of the high rate of scoring without any batter trying anything fancy. ‘Barring Rishabh,’ he chuckled. That’s what Gautam Gambhir must be saying in the dressing-room too when plans are being formulated. ‘These apply to everyone,’ could well be the head coach’s message, ‘barring Rishabh.’ Or, at least, that’s what he should be saying.