Rishabh Pant has one of best defences in world cricket: Ravichandran Ashwin

Ravichandran Ashwin rarely dedicates almost an entire YouTube segment to one particular player, but players like Rishabh Pant are like gold dust in the Indian cricketing ecosystem. Not only is he able to take on bowlers with some jaw-dropping shots, but he also has the game to grind it out in the middle. 

That’s exactly what was on offer in the fifth Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test between India and Australia, where Pant showed both sides of the coin - a 98-ball 40 in the first and 33-ball 61 in the second. While everyone has gone gaga over the 61, Ashwin reminded people that they should equally remember the fight from the first innings. 

“One opinion about Rishabh was that he plays a lot of shots, he has to fight it out in Test cricket. I have always grown up hearing that you have fight it out. In Sydney, he played two different knocks in one single game. He got hit everywhere and scored a 40, it will be the least spoken innings of Rishabh Pant. It is very unfair,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel. 

Not just that, the former Indian off-spinner also complimented Pant by calling him one of the best Test batters since the inception of the World Test Championship (WTC). But what is rarely heard of in Indian cricketing debates is Pant’s defence, which Ashwin called one of the ‘best in world cricket’. 

“In the second innings, he scored a swashbuckling fifty, earning him a lot of praise. Everyone forgot that first innings and praised him for the second knock. Test cricket is all about playing the situation. In the last seven years, batting has been extremely different. Joe Root has been in a different zone.

“We must realise that Rishabh Pant rarely gets out playing a defence. He’s got one of the best defences in world cricket. Defence has become a challenging aspect, he has the best defence with a soft hand. I have bowled to him a lot in the nets, he’s not gotten out, he doesn’t get an edge, he doesn’t get LBW, he has the best defence. I have tried telling it to him,” he said. 

But Ashwin warned Pant of the middle game, something the off-spinner believes the southpaw needs to work on, finding the middle ground between attack and defence. 

“He has all the shots—reverse sweep, slog sweep, everything—but the problem is that all these shots are high-risk shots. With his defence, he will surely score runs every game if he faces 200 balls. The point is finding that middle game. If he combines all of it, he will score 100 runs every game. He has to find that middle game,” he said. 

“We have to tell him properly what he has to do if he has to bat solid or bat with intent. He hasn’t scored a lot of runs, but he didn’t play like someone without runs. He has a lot of time on his hands. Rishabh Pant is yet to realise his fullest potential.”