"We are looking at him (Pant) as the future. He has got a lot of skill and lot of talent. It is about giving him some space and not putting too much of pressure,” said Virat Kohli after the 3rd T20I against West Indies last month, a match where Pant struck an unbeaten 65 to guide his team to victory. Exactly a month later, head coach Ravi Shastri publicly criticized the 21-year-old, saying that there’ll be a “rap on the knuckles” should he continue to “let the team down” with his shot selection. So, what went wrong in that one month? What did Pant do to agitate the team management so much, that he was called out publicly? After all, the youngster had all but played two ODIs and no T20Is during the timeframe that separated those two comments. 

The team management, at the same time, need to realize that they too, have to take a lion’s share of the blame for Pant’s shortcoming in limited-overs cricket. It is indeed unsurprising that in Tests, where he has a much more clearer and well-defined role, Pant has excelled while staying true to his natural game. In ODIs and T20Is, on the other hand, he has been nothing but twitchy, due to both the lack of clarity in what’s expected of him and the management’s inability to find him a fixed batting position. In many ways, Pant’s limited-overs career has a striking similarity to Jos Buttler’s Test career, with the Englishman facing the same problems due to the aforementioned reasons, albeit the format being different.

Cast your minds back to October 2018. Post the conclusion of the ODIs against West Indies, Kohli publicly vouched for Ambati Rayudu to be India’s No.4 at the World Cup.  "Having seen him in the Asia Cup, we feel Rayudu is the right man for the job. So our team is almost sorted" is what Kohli said, to be precise. 10 innings and six months later, the Hyderabad man was unceremoniously left out of the World Cup squad and was disregarded to such an extent that an uncapped Mayank Agarwal was flown in as the replacement for Vijay Shankar after Pant had already replaced Dhawan. Soon enough, MSK Prasad started cracking jokes about Rayudu in press conferences and in less than half a years’ time, Rayudu had gone from being the sure shot No.4 at the World Cup to the laughing stock of Indian cricket. 

There is, of course, no denying the fact that even the greatest of players sometimes need a kick up their backside, for the sense of immortality and invincibility has often brought about the downfall of many a cricketer, but throwing the players under the bus and joining hands with the mob in publicly lynching them is unjust and unfair. After all, the management, at the end of the day, need to be lending the players a shoulder, shielding and defending them and not be driving their confidence to the ground.

At this point in time, the team management, led by Kohli, seem to be clinging on to two extreme ends of the spectrum with no intentions of finding any middle ground and it’s the players who now find themselves caught in the crossfire. Perhaps they need to realize that it is okay to not paint the town red as soon as a player tastes success. Perhaps they need to realize that there is no need to publicly excoriate the players and throw them in the line of fire. Perhaps they need to realize that it’s  not fair to give players a false sense of security and then brusquely show them the door.