IND vs BAN | Rishabh Pant criticized more as he does thankless job, believes Sunil Gavaskar
Legendary Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar has branded the role of wicket-keeping as 'thankless' and believes that Rishabh Pant is being blamed more due to the nature of the role. After DRS goof-ups and stumping misses over the course of the three T20s, Pant's keeping has been the talk of the town.
Sunday marked the end of a series to forget for young Rishabh Pant, who had a nightmare behind the wickets against the Tigers. After multiple DRS goof-ups in the first T20I in Delhi, Pant committed a school-boy error in the second to botch an easy stumping and once again in the third T20I, misguided his captain behind the stumps, leading India to lose a review in the process.
Pant's sloppiness behind the wickets has led to the fans targeting him on social media, criticizing him for his mistakes. However, former Indian skipper believes otherwise and has equated the job of wicket-keeping to that of umpiring. Gavaskar feels that wicket-keeping, like umpiring, is a thankless job where people only notice the errors and believes that Pant is being crictized by the public for the exact same reason.
"There are two-three thankless jobs in this game. One is the umpires' job. If he gets nine decisions right but one decision wrong, the wrong one gets talked about," Gavaskar told TOI.
"Same thing with the wicket-keepers, they can do 95 percent of the things right but the one miss is talked about. Same thing is happening at the moment with Rishabh. His lapses are talked about more when otherwise he is keeping well," he opined.
With both Pant and Shikhar Dhawan having a rather sub-standard series, there were cries from a few fans to get rid of the duo and instead blood in a few new faces. Gavaskar believes that every player in the team is always under pressure but feels that they also need to be given adequate chances to prove themselves.
The 70-year-old feels that the series against West Indies, which will see the Men in Blue play 3 T20Is and 3 ODIs, will be a golden opportunity for the selectors to experiment ahead of the WT20 in Australia that is less than a year away.
"There is pressure on everybody. Everybody needs to be given enough chances. That is for the selectors to decide, the adequate number of chances," Gavaskar said.
"There will be opportunities to try out players in the West Indies series (next month). There are enough opportunities for selectors to mix it up and see (what is working) ."
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