2 hours Ago
New Delhi: Rishabh Pant is a mad batter. Probably the maddest India has seen. A batter who looks to take on the bowlers at every given opportunity; a batter who is always going for a win; a batter who will shock you not just with his choice of stroke but also his audacity.
We’ve seen Pant get out to a ‘stupid’ shot (as Gavaskar put it recently in Australia) many times but we’ve still let it pass because this is Pant — a batter who will win matches when he gets going. His batting was always a double-edged sword and the risk was integral to the glory. But IPL 2025 has seen Pant abandon the madness.
He looks normal. He looks ordinary. And that can never be fun.
In 8 games this season for the Lucknow Super Giants, the left-hander has scored 106 runs at an average of 15.14 (just marginally better than Rohit Sharma) and a strike-rate 98.14.
To be fair, these numbers are not acceptable and certainly not considering his high auction price of ₹ 27 crore, making him the most expensive player in IPL history. The strange thing is that Pant can bat at a high strike-rate almost effortlessly — in 2017, his SR was 165.61; in 2018, 173.
60; in 2019, 162.66; in 2022, 151.79 and in 2024, 155.
40. So why is he settling for this slow crawl? The 27-year-old has had a strike rate of above 120 just once this season. It’s remarkable and scary at the same time.
Pant has always been a batter with a leg-side bias. Brutal on anything on his legs but more circumspect outside the off-stump. Maybe that helps him in Test cricket — the bowlers have to bowl to his strengths.
But in white-ball cricket, this becomes a liability. Bowlers have constantly attacked Pant by keeping the ball way outside the off-stump. The LSG skipper looks to wait for his chance but in an era where 200-plus scores are becoming par for the course, every ball left alone is one wasted.
A similar problem has plagued Ishan Kishan as well and while it is imperative they work on their off-side play in the long term, in the short term, they need to find a way out of this quandary. In Pant’s case, upper cuts might help a bit but the big challenge to the bowlers could come from his movement around the crease. Anything in Pant’s arc goes a long way.
Power has never been his problem. But if the bowlers are coming to him then maybe he needs to go to them. Moving around the crease isn’t for everyone but it could be something that will confuse bowlers in this case.
If Pant can get them to bowl straighter, it will allow his well-honed reflexes to come into play. And even if he fails, the returns won’t be much worse than what they are at the moment. The thing is.
.. people come to the ground to watch Pant.
He excites them and that is what has earned him a reputation as a disruptor. But he looks a little scared at the moment — perhaps the reputation of LSG owner Sanjeev Goenka is intimidating. The pressure seems to be crippling him.
However, this can’t go on. The good part for Pant is that he can’t go any lower. The better part is that LSG are fourth in the table.
So it gives him more leeway to experiment; more leeway to go mad as only he can. There is still some way to go in the season and Pant has more than enough time to turn things around but for that to happen, he will need to play with freedom. The ability to disassociate himself from the result has almost come naturally to him and in his bid to find runs again, he will need to rely on guile and innovation.
The shots haven’t gone anywhere and neither has Pant. But T20 is an unforgiving format and the bigger you are, the harder you fall. Still, isn’t that the challenge and the fun.
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