Veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has praised Rishabh Pant for playing an attacking knock in Team India’s first innings of the third Test against New Zealand in Mumbai. He also compared his approach to former batter Virender Sehwag’s. However, Pant smashed 60 runs off 59 balls as India were bowled out for 263 on Saturday, November 2. New Zealand ended Day 2 at 171/9 in their second innings, with a lead of 143 runs as well.
During a discussion on Colors Cineplex, Chopra said, “Rishabh Pant will keep playing like this no matter how many left-arm spinners might come. It will be rare for a left-arm spinner to come before him and not get hit. He might not get hit in one innings but will get hit in the next. I am not surprised at all with the way he started today and the way he played.”
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“He is a batter like Viru (Virender Sehwag). Viru used to say that a batter only makes the off-spinner a bowler. He (Pant) feels a batter makes the left-arm spinner a bowler. If a left-arm spinner is bowling, it doesn’t matter how the pitch is and how big the ground is as he has to hit the ball into the stands. Rishabh Pant’s specialty is that a fielder might be placed on the boundary line, everyone knows that he would jump down the track and hit a six, but he still does that because he hits the balls into the stands. Very few players, especially in Test cricket, challenge the fielders in the deep. Viru was the one Indian who used to do this and now Rishabh is the second,” he again shared.
In the same discussion, Aakash Chopra also added that Rishabh Pant is potentially the most valuable player in modern-day Test cricket as well.
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“I am very close to the belief that Rishabh Pant is the most valuable player of modern-day Test cricket and not only of India. We can leave Bazball aside, that’s just talk. The consistency with which he is scoring runs and the sort of entertaining cricket he is playing, he is adding so much value to Test cricket. He might define this era,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
