By Tim Wigmore
“I can middle the ball playing with a straight bat as well.”
So Rishabh Pant implored himself on the fourth morning at Headingley, with his words caught on the stump mic. And with good reason. He had just played a slog sweep off a 140km/h delivery from Brydon Carse; he looked to the sky in despair, but the wind carried the ball between the slips and fine leg.
Rishabh Pant scored entertaining centuries in both Indian innings of the first Test against England at Headingley.Credit: Getty Images
In his first 23 deliveries alone, Pant also charged down the wicket and edged Chris Woakes over second slip and backed away to the leg side to make room.
Most recklessly of all, Pant fell away to the off side as he tried to ramp Carse over his shoulder, needing an inside edge to save him from being dismissed lbw. Pant’s approach resembled a professional blackjack player who was now constantly hitting on 18.
Perhaps the greatest wonder of Pant’s innings at Headingley was simply that he was there at all.
In December 2022, while driving from Delhi to his home town of Roorkee, Pant lost control of his car on the Delhi-Dehradun highway. His car skidded 200 metres before crashing into a divider and catching fire. While the car burned, Pant broke open a window to escape. He was hospitalised with major injuries to his head, back and feet and was considered lucky to survive. The scars on his legs and face remain.
How fortunate Test cricket was that Pant not only returned to the game, but has relocated his best form too.
It would be easy to say that the impudent spirit, which led him to charge down the wicket against pace second ball in both the first and second innings, spoke of a man liberated by suffering a near-death experience. Except that Pant batted with a similar anarchic spirit long before he got into his Mercedes SUV three years ago.
For all the temptation to berate Pant’s judgement, there is logic to his approach.
Essentially, Pant has little faith in his defence at the start of his innings. Rather than allowing himself to poke uncertainly at the ball and still risk getting out, he prefers to accept the dangers of attacking, but knowing that this can bring a flurry of early boundaries.
Such early adventure also encourages teams to reposition fielders from close-in to the ropes. On both 31 and 45, Pant edged Josh Tongue to the slips, into a gap that would not have been vacant for less audacious batsmen.
So there is a rationale to Pant’s essential approach – though his self-admonishing on the fourth morning at Headingley showed that his initial aggression was too extreme, even for him.
The wild strand to the start of Pant’s innings obscured that he is among the most extraordinary Test batsmen – let alone wicketkeeper-batsmen – of this age.
If his more restrained approach after the early jitters never exuded the clinical calm of KL Rahul, that is not the point of Pant. He continued to use his feet against seamers, nullifying lateral movement while crashing Tongue through the covers.
Two sixes in three balls launched over long-on off Shoaib Bashir showed Pant’s power. There was also ample evidence of his easily overlooked finesse. When he was on 91, Ben Stokes packed the off side. With finesse and force, Pant still bisected the two cover fielders.
At Headingley, the presumption was that Pant would seek to reach his century with a six, just as he had in the first innings.
But, within a single blow of reaching twin centuries, Pant surprised the crowd almost as much as in the morning: he slowed down.
As he repeatedly left deliveries from Bashir, and defended forward with ostentatious care, Pant exuded the air of a man playing at being responsible, like a reformed naughty schoolboy on his first day as a prefect.
Pant looks to the heavens on raising his ton in the second innings at Headingley.Credit: AP
Twenty-one balls after reaching 95, Pant was still on 99. Then, with a cut off Bashir for a single, he had his moment of history. This time, there was no somersault. Just a beaming smile and a glance to the heavens.
In 2586 Tests, just one man – Zimbabwe’s Andy Flower – had ever scored twin centuries in a match while also keeping wicket. Now, Pant is the second member of this club.
He is rapidly compiling a record fit to compare to any wicketkeeper in Test history. Had he converted all his 90s into centuries, Pant would have a staggering 15 centuries in 44 Tests.
His eight hundreds include four in just 10 Tests in England; Rahul Dravid is the only Indian to score more here. For all the scrutiny about Pant’s early method against pace bowling, he is the only wicketkeeper in history to score centuries away in Australia, England and South Africa.
The upshot is that Pant is swiftly mounting a formidable case to challenge Adam Gilchrist for the tag of greatest keeper-batsman of all time. While Pant averages three runs fewer than Gilchrist – 44.4, compared to 47.6 – he has done so in a far worse era for batsmen worldwide.
Pant’s feats are further elevated by his position in the order: No 5, two places higher than Gilchrist normally batted.
In 19 Tests at third drop, Pant now averages 59.7 while scoring at a strike rate of 82. If the notion of responsibility bringing the best out of him was not backed up by Pant’s frenzied start, batting at five gives him full scope to shape an innings.
Pant has achieved all this while the apparent sense of imminent peril in his batting remains. To change this would be to change the essence of Pant. Even when he plays with a straight bat, he is among the most intoxicating sights that Test cricket has ever seen.
The Daily Telegraph, London
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