Rishabh Pant will be back in Indian colours very soon, believes Ricky Ponting

After being backed by the team management for no less than six months, amidst cries from former cricketers and experts alike to drop him, Rishabh Pant suffered a shock axe in the last two ODIs against Australia earlier this month, after being replaced in the team by KL Rahul, who donned the keeper’s gloves.

Indian skipper Virat Kohli also indicated in his interviews that the team was looking to persist with Rahul as the keeper in limited-overs, meaning Pant has now found himself out of favour in all three formats, after already losing his Test spot to Wriddhiman Saha.

However, one cricketer who firmly believes that the 22-year-old will be back in national colours in no time is Aussie legend Ricky Ponting, who incidentally is also Pant’s coach in the Indian Premier League. In a Q & A session on Twitter, Ponting described Pant as a ‘young man with a huge amount of talent’ and stated that he was looking forward to working with the youngster in the forthcoming season of the T20 extravaganza.

“Rishabh Pant is a young man with a huge amount of talent. I'm looking forward to working with him again during the IPL and I'm sure he'll be back in the Indian team sooner rather than later,” Ponting answered to a fan who asked the Australian his thoughts about the out-of-favour Indian youngster.

The former Aussie captain also answered a lot of other interesting questions in the Q & A session, including giving his thoughts on the youngsters that he’ll be coaching in the IPL, Babar Azam and of course, the never-ending Steve Smith vs Virat Kohli debate.

Here are some tweets from Ponting’s Q & A session on Monday: