IPL 2020 | Rishabh Pant has to improve his keeping and batting massively, opines Gautam Gambhir

Rishabh Pant’s batting form has gone from bad to worse, this season despite Delhi Capitals qualifying to the latter stages of the competition. Neither is the left-handed batsman effective with his shot-making, his indifferent batting approach has piled up more pressure on the likes of Shimron Hetmyer and Marcus Stoinis to do the power-hitting. While it wasn’t evidently highlighted in the early stages, it started causing major problems for the franchise during their tough run-in into the playoffs. 

Former KKR skipper Gautam Gambhir, who has seen Pant’s growth in close quarters, opined that he still needs a massive improvement both in terms of his batting and his keeping, which Gambhir admitted that is under-par. Alongside that, the southpaw also stated that just because he was hitting those long sixes, he started drawing a comparison with MS Dhoni but he isn’t on the same level yet. 

“MS Dhoni probably had so much of range when he came on to international sixes. With Rishabh Pant, only because he could hit those big sixes and stuff, people started comparing him with someone like MS Dhoni. Rishabh Pant has a lot to improve, especially from the keeping point of views and from the batting point of view as well,” said Gambhir in the ESPNCricinfo video. 

Following the miserable start to the season, where his strike-rate is 109 with 285 runs, Pant was dropped from both the ODI and the T20I squad for the tour Down Under, with Sanju Samson being named in the white-ball squads. However, Gambhir believes that the comparisons between Dhoni and Pant has to stop in order for the left-hander to be a ‘better’ version of himself. 

“First of all, you have to stop saying that Rishabh Pant is the next MS Dhoni. That is one thing which media needs to stop doing it. The more media talks about it, the more Rishabh Pant starts thinking on those chances. He can never be MS Dhoni. He has to be Rishabh Pant,” he concluded.