Is Rishabh Pant the next man to keep Delhi’s proud tradition high?

The epicenter of Indian cricket has moved from the city of Mumbai to Delhi in recent times, thanks to the latter consistently supplying good players over the latest couple of decades. It was not that Delhi’s cricketing culture was less celebrated earlier but perhaps the rise of Virender Sehwag revolutionized the city’s face more than ever.

Since Sehwag and his friend Gautam Gambhir with who had opened the Indian innings in the past, a number of players from Delhi have donned the national cap. The most happening Indian cricketer at the moment – Virat Kohli, who also happens to be the country’s Test captain – is also from Delhi. And he doesn’t look he is the last either. For, there is Rishabh Pant, often being described as the next big thing in Indian cricket.

Pant just went bang, bang, bang this season

The 19-year-old left-handed wicketkeeper-batsman from Uttarakhand,who made his Ranji debut against Bengal last year, is in a terrific form this season. He has already hit a triple-hundred (308) against Maharashtra in October, becoming the fourth youngest player in the world to do so in first-class cricket (Pakistan’s Javed Miandad was the youngest to do so at 17 plus in 1974-75).

In the match before the knock for which he took just 326 balls to score a triple ton, Pant scored 146 off 124 balls against Assam and backed the triple ton with two tons in the same match against Jharkhand even as his side followed on. Both those tons (117 off 106 balls and 135 0ff 67 balls) saw Pant hitting 21 sixes which is only two less than the world record held by New Zealand’s Colin Munro. He scored the second ton in 48 balls which was also the fastest ever by an Indian batsman in the domestic first-class cricket (previous best was 56 balls – Rajesh Borah and VB Chandrasekhar – in the late 1980s).

Pant’s average, strike-rate, the number of tons are all exemplary this season and there are already talks of paving the way for his debut in the ongoing Test series versus England which India can’t lose. Pant completed 1,000 runs in Ranji Trophy in the match against Vidarbha in Chennai which ended inconclusively because of rain. And he has taken less than 10 matches to reach there with an average of above 77.

He also got a taste of the Indian Premier League this season making his debut for the Delhi Daredevils. It was not a happy occasion though as the Daredevils lost the game against Gujarat Lions by a solitary run, but Pant’s contract worth Rs 1.9 crore showed that he is definitely one of the names that India hopes to celebrate in times to come. The teenager has scored 198 runs in 10 IPL matches he has played in his debut season with the highest score of 69 and an average of 24.75.

Knocks against Nepal & Namibia spoke a lot about him

His rise to prominence, however, occurred more on the international stage earlier this year. Playing for India at the Under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh, Pant hit two memorable knocks against Nepal (78 off 24) and Namibia (111 off 96) in Bangladesh and grabbed the headlines. Later in the year, he began replicating the same in domestic cricket.

He once said that the determination in him became steel after he failed to make an Australia-bound India ‘A’ squad and hence decided to pile on the runs so that he could not be ignored again. The resolve took a toll on several bowlers, no doubt.

When talking about Rishabh Pant, Tarak Sinha can’t be far behind

When we are discussing Pant, a mention of Tarak Sinha, one of India’s unsung heroes who has played a big role in producing cricketers over the years, becomes inevitable.

Pant, also a student of Sinha, Delhi’s Achrekar, recently said that nothing matters big for his “sir” until he plays Test cricket. He said at his coach’s Sonnet Cricket Club, only those who have donned the whites for the country are the real ‘country cricketers’.

Sinha or Ustaadji as he is known, has been instrumental in producing dozens of Indian players who have gone on to represent the country in Test with success [someone like Akash Chopra might not be as successful but his role as an opener during the 2003-04 series against Australia Down Under should not go unnoticed even if it was overshadowed by other star batsmen]. And hence even if Rishabh Pant belongs to the generation which finds a bigger attraction in the shortest formats, the old-school mind of Sinha has shown more concern about his skills to succeed in Tests.

The believer in Sehwagism

His philosophy also echoes that of Sehwag that if a ball is to be to hit, it has to be hit. Sinha hasn’t tried to control this instinct despite what he thinks about Test or other forms of cricket. Pant’s technique surely has a lot of scope for improvement but his hand-eye coordination and the capacity to bang the ball with brutal force, something the likes of Sehwag and Mahendra Singh Dhoni have imported in Indian cricket in the current times.

Despite the massive gains he made at IPL auctioneering, the lad still has a mature head on his shoulders. He knows his journey has just begun and the more he makes his bat talk, the better his progress will be. Let’s hope that the wicketkeeper-batsman is ready to carry the burden once India steps into the post-Dhoni era.