'He is the reason India has scored these runs' - Sunil Gavaskar praises Rishabh Pant after blitzkrieg at SCG

The Border-Gavaskar Trophy is currently down to the last and final Test which is being played at the SCG and though the Indian top-order batters failed to meet expectations once again, India star wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant played one of the most important and entertaining knocks in the series where he smashed the Australian bowlers all around the park.

The 27-year-old southpaw scored 61 off just 33 deliveries which consisted of six fours and four sixes and had a phenomenal strike rate of 184.85. Though Pant was dismissed later on by Pat Cummins, these were still valuable runs for the Indian team who could manage a lead of just four runs after the first innings. The knock was good enough to elicit praise from India legend Sunil Gavaskar who also compared it to his previous innings in the five-match series and suggested what the rest of the Indian batters can learn from this innings.

“These are quite impactful runs (from Rishabh Pant), and he is the reason India has scored these runs because he has scored half of those runs. But the difference between the shot that Rishabh Pant played at Melbourne versus the shot that he’s played here, the difference is that the shots that he played today were in front of the wickets, he did play a shot towards the square-leg, he capitalised on Mitchell Starc’s angle and flicked it on the square-leg. And the strength that he possess of playing down the ground and hitting big sixes in those regions, he capitalized on it.

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"Rishabh Pant tried to scoop the ball once and was not successful, he also tried to reverse scoop then too he was not successful and then he planned to play straight and he was successful in doing so,” Gavaskar told Star Sports.

“That’s his normal game, whereas our other batters did not play their normal game, stepping out and playing is not Shubman Gill’s normal game, it might be his normal game when it comes to T20 but not Tests. The way Rahul played that shot was not his normal game. So, I think they had thought that we cannot prevail for long on this pitch and we’ll somehow bat it through but if it is not you normal game then there are quite few chances that you might be successful,” Gavaskar added.