Shamik Chakrabarty in Chennai
Back in December 2022, when Rishabh Pant’s Mercedes crashed and caught fire on the Delhi-Dehradun highway, cricket was probably the last thing on his mind. The young man was fortunate to survive.
He suffered multiple ligament injuries to his right knee that put his cricket career in jeopardy. But Pant sang the merry song of courage and resilience, and came back to the Indian team fold after nearly two years. His comeback has been gradual, first in T20Is, followed by ODIs and then Test cricket. On Saturday at Chepauk, he scored his sixth Test hundred.
Talent transcends geographic boundaries. No wonder that Pant has so many admirers all over the world. Ricky Ponting, his former coach at Delhi Capitals is one. “It’s a remarkable comeback,” Ponting said recently on Sky Sports. “If you can see his leg even now and listen to the stories he tells about what he confronted during his car accident, not just the mental scarring that comes with that, but the physical side and the rehab he went through, I didn’t think he would play last year’s (2024) IPL.”
How good is Pant? To put things in perspective, he has six centuries in 34 Tests. MS Dhoni had six in 90 matches.
Pant fell prey to a soft dismissal in the first innings. In the second, he made sure he didn’t repeat his mistakes. About 10 minutes after lunch on the third day, as the left-hander pushed Shakib Al Hasan wide of long-off for a couple, he raised his bat and went into Shubman Gill’s embrace. The seam movement had died down on the Chepauk pitch, there was no scoreboard pressure, and the Bangladesh bowling didn’t ask tough questions. Still, this was a significant hundred, especially with an eye to the future.
In a long Test season, when India will play 10 matches, including five in Australia in the winter, it was imperative from the team’s point of view that Pant got into the red-ball groove quickly. It was never easy to return to the longer format after almost two years and hit the ground running. But Pant is a special player, and he will be central to his team’s chances on tougher assignments (read, Australia).
“I have spent a lot of time with him (Pant) on and off the field, and watching him score his first fifty and first hundred after his comeback gives me so much pleasure because I have seen him work so hard for it when he was coming back from the injury,” said Gill, doffing his cap to his teammate after the day’s play. “And I think he also must be feeling really good.”
During their 167-run fourth wicket partnership, many boundaries were hit and every time Pant seemingly insisted on a routine – two punches on the gloves and two taps on the bat. Gill wasn’t comfortable. “I was telling him not to do that,” he said. “My bat is quite old. I used it in England series and he (Pant) was hitting the bat quite hard. I told him it could break. He was like, ‘let’s do it again. I was, like, ‘bro, calm down’. ”
For a major part of his innings, Pant was subdued. He respected good deliveries and didn’t try to manufacture shots. Closer to lunch, he upped the ante. A ramp for a six off Hasan Mahmud was audacious.
A few deliveries later, he lived a charmed life, as Najmul Hossain Shanto dropped a sitter off Shakib. Pant was on 72 then. He celebrated it by taking back-to-back fours in Shakib’s next over. Then, he went down the track against the left-arm spinner to hit a six followed by a four to the long-leg boundary. He, along with Gill, batted Bangladesh out of the game.
In the grand scheme of things, this innings will give Pant a lot of confidence. He is back, and in some style.