As Rishabh Pant began his disconsolate walk back to the dressing room after being dismissed against Mumbai Indians in Lucknow Super Giants’ Indian Premier League (IPL) match, the television cameras panned to Sanjiv Goenka offering a wry smile in the VIP enclosure. The reaction of the LSG honcho whenever Pant loses his wicket has been a matter of recurring interest in this year’s IPL. And it isn’t merely because the franchise shelled out a record ₹27 crore for the star wicketkeeper-batter in the last mega auction.
It also stems from Goenka’s reputation as an obtrusive owner who doesn’t hold back from openly expressing his displeasure to players following a poor performance. It came to the surface last year when visuals of an animated Goenka offering then skipper K.L. Rahul a dressing-down on the field — you didn’t have to be a lip-reading expert to work that out — after a humbling defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad did the rounds on social media. The episode seemed to strain the relationship between Goenka and Rahul, even though some damage limitation was attempted in the very next game with the two exchanging forceful smiles in a post-match interaction in front of the cameras. It was to nobody’s surprise that the franchise subsequently released Rahul and showed no interest in his services during the auction.
How long then before Goenka’s wry smiles turn into visible frustration with Pant? Having occupied the hot seat following Rahul’s exit, the 27-year-old has had a far from auspicious start to his stint with LSG, tallying just 19 runs across four matches including a six-ball blob in his very first outing. It’s perhaps best not to dwell on his numbers in the ongoing season, for an average of 4.75 and a strike rate of 59.38 after the first two weeks of the IPL are egregious anomalies. It can happen to anyone in a format where you are obligated to attack from the outset.
Cold numbers
The southpaw is bound to better his scores, which read 0, 15, 2, 2 right now, as the season progresses. But there is something more fundamental to this discussion than just Pant’s lean stretch at the beginning of this season. It is that his white-ball career as a whole hasn’t risen to the heights that were widely expected. Be it when he has donned the blue of India or during his nine-year association with Delhi Capitals in the IPL before his big-money move to LSG, Pant’s perceived destructiveness as a white-ball player — blessed as he is with ferocious power to muscle the ball down the ground as well as the cheekiness to manufacture shots behind the wicket — hasn’t translated into match-winning performances in reality. Not on enough occasions anyway. Cold numbers bear testimony.
Over 76 T20Is for India, which is a significant sample size, he has scored 1209 runs at an average of 23.25 and a strike rate of 127.26. The subpar average can be excused given Pant’s high-risk nature, but the latter figure, at a time when the best players in the slam-bang version are striking at over 160, indicates that his extravagant strokeplay hasn’t been up to scratch either. As the No. 3 batter in India’s T20 World Cup triumph in the United States and Caribbean last year, Pant did begin the tournament with a couple of vital contributions against Ireland and Pakistan on surfaces inimical to big-hitting. But as the event reached its climax, he slipped back to being the batter who hasn’t fully found his footing in coloured clothing.
In ODI cricket, where opportunities have been fewer, his 31 matches have produced 871 runs at an unremarkable average of 33.5. There was a feeling that Pant may have turned a corner in his white-ball career when he walloped an unbeaten 125 off 113 deliveries to steer India to a successful chase of 260 in an ODI series decider against England in Manchester in July 2022, but a horrific car accident towards the end of that year derailed his progress. He has only featured in four 50-over games since. While he was part of India’s 15-member squad that won the Champions Trophy in Dubai last month, it was a spot on the bench that he had to be content with right through as Rahul, the first-choice wicketkeeper-batter, offered no reason with his performances for the think-tank to look elsewhere.
In the IPL, his overall numbers are decent. But for a player as outrageously gifted as Pant, the expectations are bound to be sky-high. By the yardsticks used to gauge IPL’s A-listers, it is fair to say Pant has underwhelmed. Not since 2018, after all, has he breached the 500-run mark in an edition. Just 20 years old then, he was actually otherworldly during that season, smashing 684 runs at 52.61 while also achieving a strike rate of 173.6. But he hasn’t come close to replicating that grand run thereafter. That he has managed only seven half-centuries in his last 57 IPL matches illustrates the point.
All of this is in marked contrast to his resounding impact in Test cricket. Despite the five-match series in Australia recently not yielding favourable rewards for the intrepid strokemaker — Sunil Gavaskar’s irate response on air (‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!’) to one of Pant’s dismissals has predictably turned into content for an ad featuring the two prior to this IPL — he is already arguably India’s most distinguished keeper-batter in Tests. His 2,948 runs after 43 Tests, while averaging 42.11, entail match-defining contributions etched in our collective memory. And these performances have been clocked up across the world: he is the only Indian gloveman with Test centuries in Australia, England and South Africa.
The Sehwag syndrome?
Pant’s middling white-ball career is reminiscent in a sense to what another fearless dasher from Delhi, or Najafgarh to be precise, went through. Predisposed to treating bowlers with utter disdain long before it became the sine qua non of modern-day batting, Virender Sehwag should have blossomed against the white ball as much as he did against the red cherry over his 14-year spell in international cricket. It was only in the latter part of his career, however, that Sehwag truly began to optimise his ability in 50-over cricket. Perhaps the spread-out fields post the initial phase of restrictions in the shorter formats was a factor. In Tests, slip cordons and attacking fields for longer durations often played into his hands, allowing him to pounce on the faintest error and capitalise with a spree of boundaries.
There are certainly more open spaces in the outfield for Pant to exploit while donning the white flannels. But with captains more inclined to setting in-out fields than ever before in Tests, it’s not as if Pant hasn’t shown the smarts to manoeuvre the ball into gaps and pick his moments to brandish his scything willow for fours and sixes in the classical version. It is perhaps a matter of Pant applying these skills in the other formats consistently enough.
In this IPL campaign, there hasn’t been a discernible pattern to his wickets to underline a pressing chink. If there is a facet of his game that can get better nevertheless, it is his off-side play. The deliveries that have accounted for his downfall have ranged from an almost waist-high full toss by Harshal Patel to a rank long hop by Glenn Maxwell. To excessively ponder over these dismissals in a format where, at the cost of repetition, these things tend to happen would be unreasonable. But the fact that it is Pant who is going through this poor phase, rather than someone with an illustrious white-ball record, means that the scrutiny will not go away in a hurry.
The expensive price tag — he is the costliest buy in IPL history — only fuels the pressure. LSG coach Justin Langer was asked about Pant’s form after the team’s victory over MI in the previous game.
“He will be fine,” the Australian reassured. “I have got one job, it’s just to keep him smiling. Because when you come into a new franchise, often you try so hard. There are a lot of expectations. He is the captain of the team. With that often comes pressure. Nobody understands that pressure. There are probably a dozen out of a billion people in this country who understand that pressure. We will keep him smiling and keep him relaxed. We have won 50% of our games and Rishabh hasn’t made many runs yet. Imagine when he does start making runs. I cannot wait to see that.”
Pant will hope that moment arrives against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens on Tuesday. Goenka and the LSG faithful will flash a gleeful smile for the cameras as and when it happens.
Published – April 08, 2025 01:13 pm IST
