Rishabh Pant or KL Rahul? Who would be a better choice in India's Champions Trophy Playing 11
The Indian Cricket Team, under the captaincy of Rohit Sharma is set to take part in the forthcoming marquee event of this year, Champions Trophy 2025. They are a part of Group - A alongside Asian Rivals Bangladesh, Fierce-Rivals Pakistan and New Zealand led by Mitchell Santner. Rohit Sharma and CO will be kicking off their Champions Trophy 2025 campaign versus Bangladesh on the 20th of February in the city of Dubai.
India's squad for this year's mega event also got announced recently and the squad is largely similar to that of the 2023 ODI World Cup with the exception of Mohammed Siraj as Arshdeep Singh has taken his place in the squad.
The duo of KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant will be playing the roles of the Wicketkeeper batters and since the performance of the former was good in the 2023 ODI World Cup, he's likely to get the nod ahead of the latter.
While Pant was out of action due to a life-threatning car accident, Rahul was the regular wicketkeeper of the Indian Team. In 2023 alone, the 31-year-old took part in 27 One-Day International games and amassed 1,060 runs, including seven fifties and two centuries.
Once Pant returned, the team management decided to give him a chance to prove himself in the final contest of the Sri Lanka ODI series but he got dismissed for a duck. The newly appointed LSG skipper has a boundary percentage of 59.7%. This means that the Southpaw scores majority of his runs with the help of fours and sixes.
His strike-rate in the 50 over format is also 107.5 and he also comes out to bat after 35 overs which is a favourable situation for Rishabh.
But, the question which arises here is, who will be a better choice in the starting 11 for Team India as a wicket-keeper batsman, Rahul or Pant? Well, Cricket experts believe that Ajit Agarkar, the chief selector and skipper Rohit Sharma gave the answer to that question during the squad announcement.
In the list of the 15-member squad, the top 11 important players were announced in the order of Batters, wicket-keeper, all-rounders and bowlers and the last three players were announced as Rishabh Pant, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Axar Patel. With this, it's believed that the above three mentioned players are going to be backups for the main playing 11. Therefore, it's likely that KL Rahul will start as the wicket-keeper, as he played in the 2023 ODI World Cup.
In the recently concluded five-match BGT series versus Australia, Pant didn't play that well and he played wrong shots which led to his dismissals. It's believed that the 27-year-old is likely to not be given a spot in the Main Starting 11.
