‘He drove for an hour and knocked on my door at 3:30 AM’ – Rishabh Pant’s childhood coach recalls heartfelt incident

Tarak Sinha, Rishabh Pant’s childhood coach, went down memory lane to the day when the latter went to his doorstep at 3:30 AM to apologise. Sinha told how the 23-year-old Pant was having a sleepless night as he was upset after which he drove one hour to his coach’s home in Vaishali.

Pant went to his coach as he couldn’t see his mentor upset, Sinha revealed. Sinha has played a crucial role in Pant’s rise as a cricketer in international cricket. The Uttarakhand-born Pant spent most of his formative years at Delhi’s iconic club Sonnet, where Sinha was the head coach.

That was touching as well as disturbing: Rishabh Pant’s coach

“Once I got upset with him during one of the net sessions at my club Sonnet which is in South Delhi. He couldn’t sleep for the whole night and knocked on my door around 3:30 am! I live in Vaishali (National Capital Region) and which is almost an hour’s drive where he was staying in Delhi,” Sinha told Cricket Next.

“I was like at this time? Why? He said that he wanted to apologise because he could never see me being upset. That was touching as well as disturbing since he had to make that journey post-midnight. In fact, my family was so upset with me that I was harsh on the kid,” he stated.

Pant made his debut back in 2017 but became a regular member of the national team from mid-2018 onwards. In the 2020-21 Border Gavaskar Trophy in Australia, his match-winning knock at The Gabba in Brisbane also grabbed a lot of limelight.

Even in the series against England, he didn’t shy away from going for his shots. Recently, when the 2021 Indian Premier League (IPL) had to be suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pant led the Delhi Capitals (DC) to the top half of the points table.

His rise has led to comparisons among him, MS Dhoni, and Virat Kohli. However, Sinha said that Pant has some distance to travel before he can take leadership roles for the national team.

“It’s a little too early to say that. Pant has to establish himself first more as a player. If you look at the iconic players like Dhoni and Virat Kohli, they had to do a lot before they got the captaincy,” he added.