Gargi Raut at Headingley
Rishabh Pant walked in at the start of Day 4 with the weight of the world on his shoulders. The captain, Shubman Gill, had trudged back to the pavilion after playing on to a Brydon Carse delivery under grey skies and piercing winds. Pant knew that he had to take responsibility for steering the ship. While KL Rahul stood firm at one end and India had three more batters to fall back on, the job was far from over. In tricky English conditions, with Carse, Ben Stokes and Chris Woakes running in with the new ball, Pant had his task cut out for him.
As always, watching Pant was a rollercoaster ride. There were moments when he played with the full face of the bat, defended, drove and left deliveries, and there were also times when his audacious nature took control of his body, and he tried a few lap shots. Some slaps, some laps and some defensive shots on the move left the crowd gasping for air. After all, watching Pant bat is never an easy affair, especially in Test cricket.
While many thought that Pant would play his usual unconventional and outrageous brand of cricket, it was evident from what was heard on the stump mic and seen on the telly that he was consciously restraining himself from hitting those shots. “Tameez se khel” Pant told himself, as heard on the stump mic. “Play with a straight bat! What are you doing?!” At one point, he was livid himself for having played the shots that could have put the team in danger. After all, India still needed a high-scoring partnership to have a shot at winning the Test match.
Throughout the deputy captain’s innings, everyone sat around the press box and the lunchroom nervously. While the press box has a floor-to-ceiling glass view of the ground, the lunchroom has a beautiful balcony. That view, though, is restricted, and media personnel are left with no option but to rely on televisions to get their updates while they have their meals. While it’s a standard practice to do so, the dynamic shifts when Pant is batting.
The thing is, because the broadcast always lags a few seconds, the only real-time cues you have are from the crowd’s reactions. And when Pant is at the crease, the crowd’s cheers could mean anything. It could either be a dismissal or a shot so audacious it leaves the stadium stunned. While the telly would still be stuck on the previous delivery, everyone in the room would either leave their meals abandoned and scramble to the balcony or try to identify the cause of the cheers. “Is that an ‘out’ cheer or a ‘boundary’ cheer?” they would ask each other. And with Pant, really, it could go either way.
The drama reached its peak when he was in the nervous 90s, with legends like Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar waiting out on the balconies, the crowd nervously anticipating a century and the press box quietly waiting on a historic milestone. Pant played out Joe Root and Shoaib Bashir’s overs, leaving and defending. Every time he left a ball, denied a single by a delivery that went through to the wicketkeeper, smiles would take over people’s faces. Everyone realised that Pant wanted the runs to come off his bat. As he defended, the English crowd cheekily yelled out “boringgg” in unison.
And then came the moment everyone had been waiting for – back-to-back centuries in the same match from Pant, a feat never before achieved by an Indian wicketkeeper. As he ran the run that brought up his hundred, the stadium erupted. The balconies, packed with legends of the game, burst into applause. Sunil Gavaskar, beaming, signalled for Pant to pull out his signature cartwheel celebration. The Indian fans, scattered across the stands, were on their feet. Pant had just made history, and the moment was theatre in its purest form.