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Team India has had seven skippers in 2022 and Shikhar Dhawan will become the eighth man to captain the national team this year when he will lead them in the upcoming ODI series against West Indies later this month. Among the seven who have already led India in the past seven months are KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik, and Jasprit Bumrah. However, with regular skipper Rohit Sharma turning 35 earlier in April, the game of musical chairs around the captaincy of the Indian cricket team is expected to be an intriguing one with Jasprit Bumrah currently leading the race by a fair margin, according to some experts. But former India stumper Saba Karim believes that Rishabh Pant might tip the scale in his favor in the race for the next full-time captain if he manages to repeat his red-ball performances in limited-overs cricket.
According to Saba Karim, Rishabh Pant will become perhaps the biggest name in Indian cricket soon and backed him for a leadership role in the Indian cricket team.
But Saba Karim advised him to focus on improving his game, particularly in white-ball cricket as he hasn't lived up to his potential there.
The former India wicketkeeper also urged Rishabh Pant to continue to play the way he does but asked to put a little more price tag on his wicket in ODIs and T20Is and not get distracted because of all the captaincy talk around him.
“Pant is a special player and has match-winning abilities. I believe that he can emerge as a big player for India in all three formats. Looking at his performances in the overseas, yes we can say that he is a possible candidate for the next captain. But I think every player should focus on giving match-winning performances and not on getting the captain's hat,” Saba Karim told Jagran TV.
In Test cricket, Rishabh Pant is a blockbuster entertainer. Earlier this month, Rishabh Pant smashed a sensational 146 off just 111 deliveries, hitting the quickest century by an Indian wicketkeeper in the longest format of the game in the fifth and final Test against England at Edgbaston. Rishabh Pant, subsequently, went on to make 57 off 86 balls in the second innings.
En route to his fifty, Rishabh Pant broke a 72-year-old record. With his scores of 146 and 57, Rishabh Pant now holds the record for most runs scored by a visiting team wicketkeeper in a single Test match.
Previously, the record was held by West Indies great Clyde Walcott who had made 14 and 168* in a Test against England at Lord’s in 1950.
Meanwhile, Clyde Walcott’s record was not the only milestone Rishabh Pant achieved in that Test match.
With his 89-ball century in the first innings, Rishabh Pant went past the legendary MS Dhoni to become the fastest India wicketkeeper batter to reach the three-figure mark in Test cricket. While Dhoni took 93 balls to complete his ton in 2005, Rishabh Pant needed only 89 deliveries to achieve the milestone.
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Rishabh Pant also broke a long-standing Sachin Tendulkar record. The southpaw became the youngest Indian cricketer to hit 100 sixes in international cricket. Rishabh Pant attained the landmark by smashing England spinner Jack Leach out of the park during his brilliant knock on Friday.
Sachin Tendulkar was previously the youngest Indian to smash 100 sixes in international cricket, having achieved the feat as a 25-year-old. But Rishabh Pant’s heroics at Edgbaston helped him leapfrog the iconic cricketer as he reached the landmark at 24 years, 271 days.
Besides breaking the records of MS Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar, Rishabh Pant became the youngest wicketkeeper batter in the history of the longest format of the game to complete 2,000 runs as well.
Rishabh Pant also became just the second India wicketkeeper after Farokh Engineer to make a ton and half-century in the same Test.
In 1973, Farokh Engineer became the first to achieve the feat when he slammed a century and a fifty in the same Test match against England in Mumbai. Farokh Engineer’s scores of 121 and 66 respectively came at the Brabourne Stadium against the Three Lions 49 years ago.
Since impressing former cricketers and fans with his batting in the Birmingham Test, Rishabh Pant's batting has gone downhill in T20Is and ODIs. He has managed to score only 26, 1, and 0 in his three innings at Trent Bridge, The Oval, and the Lord's.
Seeing his struggles return in white-ball cricket, former England captain Michael Vaughan has told him to shun his ultra-aggressive approach, especially at the start of his innings.
“I would say to Rishabh Pant, don’t be ultra-aggressive. He has got his license to be aggressive in white-ball cricket, but in red-ball cricket, it just looks like a careless approach,” Michael Vaughan had told Cricbuzz.
“And in white ball cricket, it looks like he is almost overthinking it. He is that one player in that space who can win India a game in a space of 15 overs of batting. He is such a good player, you just want him to have that freedom. Not to be worried about the shots that he is playing even he is getting out. His job according to me in this Indian team is to go for course chaos,” Michael Vaughan added.
