Rishabh Pant: From a brat to brilliant

A tour Down Under may prove to be the Waterloo for many a cricketer not only because the Australians play very competitive cricket but also because the pitches there are fast and bouncy. While it may be a paradise for the faster bowlers it may be a deluge for batsmen whose batting technique lacks the capability to handle the short pitched deliveries — used mercilessly and frequently by the Australian bowlers.

However, it was that one last innings of Rishabh Rajendra Pant in the last Test against Australia that all too suddenly not only changed the public opinion about him but also his fortunes. The young Rishabh Pant was recognised to have come of age and capable of not only being a responsible batsman but also capable of taking up the responsibility of leading an illustrious team; the latter role having come up accidentally due to an injury to Shreya Iyer, the designated skipper of the Delhi Capitals team in the Indian Premier League. Leading a team in the IPL can be actually more demanding than leading a national team due to the heterogeneous composition of team members with some of them having joined a team for the very first time and little being known about their psychology which at times may be more important than an individual’s playing skills and talent.

Born on 4 October 1997 to Rajendra and Saroj Pant at Roorkee, in the state of Uttarakhand, Rishabh began his cricket training at the Sonnet Cricket Academy, in New Delhi under Tarak Sinha. As Rishabh was not a resident of Delhi, his training was limited to the weekends when he would be accompanied by his mother to the country’s capital. The training brought results when in a match between Delhi and Assam, Rishabh scored 150 runs in the second innings of the match after having lost his wicket irresponsibly in the first innings with his individual score at 35 and when he seemed well set for a big score. An international breakthrough came for Rishabh, in December 2015, when he was named as one of the members of the Under-19 World Cup team.

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