Rishabh Pant is the future of the Indian cricket team, says Sourav Ganguly

Rishabh Pant destroyed arguably the best bowling attack featured in IPL 2018, Sunrisers Hyderabad, as he scored an impressive 128 for Delhi yesterday. After putting Bhuvaneshwar Kumar to shame by hitting a plundering 43 runs off 11 deliveries, Pant went on to score 128 runs from 63 balls, which is the highest T20 score attained by an Indian in the league.

Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly was enthralled by Pant’s performance and said that the Delhi Daredevil’s wicketkeeper-batsman will get to play for the national team in the years to come.  

“For Rishabh it will happen, he will get there... I think he is the future,” Ganguly said at a promotional programme of Cycle Pure Agarbathies.

"For the likes of Pant, Ishan Kishan (who scored a 21-ball 52), time will come. They are young there's no hurry. They will get matured as they play more games with time. They will play for India in the years to come. But having said that consistency is important, hope it's not just one off. I was reading about Ishan Kishan after that knock in Kolkata... When you pick someone for the country, you look at consistency -- how many times does he keep doing that. Yes, T20 is different, opportunities are a lot lesser,” he added.

Two days after being dropped from India’s T20 squad for their tour of Ireland and England, the 20-year-old has seemingly vented out his frustration at the Feroz Shah Kotla on Thursday. This decision was made after MS Dhoni had to be accommodated for his return to the team.

Ganguly backed the selector's decision by saying, “At the present moment MS Dhoni is there. You can't replace MS at the moment, then you have Dinesh Karthik who also deserves a chance in the national side, especially after what he did in Sri Lanka to win that game which was absolutely lost for India. Dinesh deserves more than anybody else because I think he is a very very good player.”

Even though in vain, Pant’s performance will certainly be an example of cricket excellence and is comparable to Brendon McCullum's 73-ball 158 not out against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the opening night of the IPL 2008 when Kolkata Knight Riders won by 140 runs.

"I saw McCullum knock from the other end in the first game of IPL. I was batting with him, but to see Rishabh Pant play the way he did yesterday was phenomenal.

"Delhi were struggling having lost a few wickets, he was involved in a couple of runouts and to come out and play like that for a young player was remarkable,"  Ganguly said.