Rishabh Pant breaks Gautam Gambhir's record in the IPL

IPL 2018 seems to be as much a year of the youngsters as it is of the experienced players. With a teeming crop of talented young cricketers like Prithvi Shaw, Shreyas Iyer, Abhishek Sharma and Shivam Mavi playing exceptionally, the future of Indian Cricket seems to be in good hands. Amongst this bunch is Rishabh Pant, who’s been absolutely phenomenal in the ongoing tournament.

20 year-old Rishabh Pant has had a dream run in the IPL till now, scoring runs left, right and centre. Although his team, the Delhi Daredevils (DD) performed poorly as a unit and ended up as the first team to be eliminated from the IPL 2018, Pant’s performances have definitely garnered a lot of attention. In DD’s previous game against the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), Pant became the highest run scorer for the side in a season, breaking Gautam Gambhir’s record along the way.

Rishabh Pant has had a dream IPL in 2018

The youngster is currently the Orange Cap holder and holds the unique record for scoring the most runs for DD in a season, with 582 runs in 12 matches. Prior to this, Gambhir had held this record previously, having scored 534 runs for the franchise in 2008. Armed with a mammoth strike rate of 179.62, Rishabh Pant has been a lone bright spot for the Delhi side, along with the two other batting sensations of the team, namely Shreyas Iyer and Prithvi Shaw.

At the outset of IPL 2018, Pant was retained by the Delhi franchise for a whopping sum of INR 15 crores. He’s proved to be worthy of the price tag as he’s been useful, both with the willow and behind the stumps. He’s scored the highest individual score of the ongoing series (128 runs in 63 balls) against SRH, albeit in a losing cause. With four 50+ scores and a century, the young man has received praise from all quarters.

DD, however, couldn’t climb out of the abyss they’d fallen into at the beginning of the tournament. The lack of form of Gautam Gambhir and his eventual decision to step down from captaincy meant that the reigns of leadership were thrust into the hands of young Shreyas Iyer. Though not without a few fine captaincy choices, Iyer wasn’t able to pull off the Herculean task of getting DD anywhere close to the play-off slots and the lacklustre form of heavyweight players like Glenn Maxwell only deepened their doom.

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