Former India opener turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has picked Rishabh Pant as his Player of the Match for the second T20I between Team India and West Indies. Pant smacked an unbeaten 52 off just 28 deliveries when Team India were struggling in the middle. He stitched a 76-run fifth-wicket partnership with Venkatesh Iyer and posted a challenging 187-run target for the Windies as well.
Aakash Chopra said in a video shared on his YouTube channel: “I was strongly feeling that I should go towards Bhuvneshwar Kumar because the 19th over he bowled, I thought that was game, set and match. But it is a batter’s game, I am going towards Rishabh Pant. It was an extremely mature knock.”
Chopra explained: “The knock came in double quick speed, 28-ball 52 not out, which included seven fours and a one-handed six. India was in a dangerous situation at that time. If you had faltered even slightly, you would have reached 160-170 with great effort.”
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Team India were reduced to a score of 106/4 in the 14th over when Virat Kohli got out. With not much batting to follow, the onus was on Pant and Iyer and they did that successfully. Aakash Chopra again added that Team India would have struggled to post a competitive total if Pant had gotten out early.
He elaborated: “You could have fallen short of that as well because if he had gotten dismissed at that time, Venkatesh would have had to bat with Harshal and Deepak, and that wouldn’t have been very very easy. This was a wow knock. That is why he is my Player of the Match because it was a risk-averse knock.”
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“But along with him, we can include the partnership as well because Rishabh Pant couldn’t have done it alone, let’s be honest. Venkatesh Iyer’s knock was also very important, because it was a short knock it is not remembered later but the truth is that it was absolutely incredibly important for India for these two guys to finish well,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
