Sunil Gavaskar Slams Rishabh Pant for throwing away his wicket against South Africa: Former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar has bashed young wicketkeeper-batsman, Rishabh Pant, for throwing away his wicket in the ongoing test series against South Africa. Adding on to his criticism, Gavaskar said that “Rahul Dravid must have given him a bamboo.”
Pant charged down against Lungi Ngidi in the second innings of the second test match at the Wanderers Johannesburg and got himself out caught behind. Pant was dismissed for a three balls duck and left everyone speechless with his audacious approach to charge at the beginning of the innings.
It must be noted that Rishabh Pant hasn’t contributed much to the team’s success since the conclusion of the Border Gavaskar Trophy. He did score a few acceptable knocks every now and then, however, consistently hasn’t been there.
A fan on social media raised a query whether why everyone’s targetting Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane when Rishabh Pant too hasn’t contributed much since the test series against Australia?
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Replying to the fan’s query, Gavaskar replied, “It’s a valid question. This is something one could understand if Rishabh Pant had been batting on 30 and 40. This is something he had not done in Australia. There he applied himself, recognised that there will be hard times at the beginning when you come in to bat and then battling through the hard times, he got set and got to know how the pitch is. And then he played the big shots. That’s what he did in Australia.”
Everyone was mesmerised with the way Pant charged down the wicket and smacked James Anderson for a six during the England tour of India, last year. He took that as a trademark for himself to put the bowler under pressure, but that hasn’t worked for the cricketer in the recent past.
Gavaskar reckons that the stumper batsman can’t lean on a similar approach every time he comes out to play, at least not at the beginning of his innings.
“This is something we saw against England, at the start of the series. When England came to India, he was jumping down the pitch and trying to hit James Anderson… he did that so well. But after that he seems to think that is the only way to play. That is not the way to play and I am pretty certain that in the change room, Rahul Dravid would have given him a hearing, or as they say in cricket, Dravid must have given him a ‘bamboo’,” added Gavaskar.
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