Indian cricket team wicket-keeper batter Rishabh Pant opened up about skipper Rohit Sharma dropping himself from the fifth Test match against Australia in Sydney. Pant called it an emotional yet selfless act before adding that they all see him “as a leader”. Rohit’s form has been terrible during the ongoing Test series against Australia and with just 31 runs from 3 matches, he faced a lot of criticism from both fans as well as experts. Rohit took the call to drop himself for the final Test match and Pant highlighted Rohit’s selflessness and leadership as we went on to call the star India batter “a true leader”.
“There are some decisions you are not involved in. I cannot explain more than that,” Pant told reporters.
“It was an emotional decision. We see him as a leader,” he added.
Pant said he batted with restraint on the opening day of the fifth Test against Australia because character of the SCG pitch and the game situation did not allow him to be his customary aggressive self.
Pant, who copped severe criticism from all corners for his callous approach to batting during the previous Test at Melbourne, made a 98-ball 40 in India’s 185 all out on Friday.
“I think in this innings, I was not in a frame of mind where I wanted to take charge of the game because the wicket was doing too much and the kind of situation we were in,” Pant said in the post-day press meet.
“I would say there might be a 50-50 chance which I could have taken early on in this innings but sometimes you have to play more secure cricket especially the way, wicket was behaving.
“We knew that if we lost one more wicket here, we might lose 2-3 in quick succession. So that was the idea behind the way I was playing,” he added.
Pant’s falling pull in Melbourne had prompted legendary Sunil Gavaskar to call the shot “stupid” and in the second innings, he slogged a half-tracker from Travis Head to find the only fielder in the deep when the Test match could have been saved.
“Yes, there is a time to attack, but when you have to feel that from inside. I can’t just premeditate that I’m going to play this way. Whatever the game asked me to do on a given day, that’s what I tried to do and that is the mindset.”
(With PTI inputs)
Topics mentioned in this article
