MS Dhoni admirers abused Rishabh Pant on social media after the Team India wicketkeeper-batter revealed that he was left shaken by “Dhoni, Dhoni” taunts hurled at him by the crowd during the early part of his career.
“When I started out, there were a lot of seniors. Also Yuvi pa (Yuvraj Singh), Mahi Bhai (MS Dhoni) were all there. So, there were super seniors in there. But they never made me feel like I was playing with super seniors. They were very welcoming and made me feel comfortable. I think this has always been the culture of the Indian team. To make each other comfortable,” Rishabh Pant told Star Sports in an interview.
“I never understood this comparison (with Dhoni) because one player had barely played five games and the other had played 500 games. The comparison made no sense at all. I used to go back in my room and cry. I felt a lot of pressure and wondered how I'll manage. Then I missed that stumping in Mohali and the crowd started to chant ‘Dhoni! Dhoni!'. It was tough,” he added.
Rishabh Pant's comments about MS Dhoni became a hot topic on X, with many expressing their opinion on the matter.
Some admirers of MS Dhoni trolled Rishabh Pant with expletives because the young cricketer's remarks angered them.
Langda pant BC 😡 dhoni Tera baap hai h!jd€ ki aul@d.
— Ajatshatru (@Ajatshatru72093) February 1, 2024
The former India captain has played a key role in shaping the left-hander's career and has often given valuable advice to his successor that has helped him in overcoming rough phases during his blossoming graph in the sport.
“I always find it difficult to explain my relationship with him (MS Dhoni). I could share anything and everything with him. Even those things that I'd normally not share with anyone else. Once during training, I told him that I am able to keep flawlessly during IPL games but when it comes to international games, I fumble or make mistakes. I asked him for advice and he just told me casually to keep the same mentality like for an international game. As if it was that easy and I told him that ‘Bhaiyya, you are a legend, I'm just starting' (laughs). I sometimes joke with him that, ‘you became a legend and left all the pressure on me, that's unfair,” Rishabh Pant recalled.
During the same interview, Rishabh Pant made a bombshell revelation about the life-threatening car crash that he suffered 13 months ago on the Delhi-Dehradun Highway.
The 26-year-old revealed that if he wasn't rescued from the car that had caught fire after the accident, his right leg could have become infected and may have needed amputation to save his life.
He underlined that for the first time, he experienced the feeling of being scared and feared that he could lose one of his legs in the immediate aftermath of his near-fatal crash in December 2022.
“Doctors were surprised and told me that I didn't even have a hairline fracture despite having such an accident. Yes, the knee injury was major but this could have been a lot worse. They always tell me that I'm very lucky. I wonder how I'm supposed to feel lucky as I had such an accident but the flip side is that I'm still alive,” Rishabh Pant told Star Sports.
“For 30 days, I was bedridden. I couldn't move. The friction burns were extreme and initially when I was trying to walk, I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to resume walking/running in a normal way. I needed a lot of help in the early stages. Just to stand up, three to four people had to help me around. Since my childhood, I'm used to running around and doing my things on my own. So, this feeling was disturbing for me and I felt disrespectful to myself as to how anyone can be so helpless,” the left-hander added.
“Luckily when the accident happened, I was aware of the wounds, I was lucky as it could easily have been a lot worse than it was. I didn't know what it was that saved me. My right leg was dislocated, I was lying down. I asked somebody for help and thanks to them, I was able to fix my leg back into the right position. If my nerve had been damaged, we would have had to amputate my leg. That was when I got really scared, because earlier, I was in so much pain that I couldn't think of anything else,” Rishabh Pant elaborated.
“For the first time in life, I had given up. I felt like my time in this world was up. Never had this feeling before,” the explosive Team India batter expressed.
Also, Rishabh Pant thanked his mother for standing by him during his worst phase and how her unconditional backing motivated him to look at life positively.
Eventually, this assisted the southpaw in his recovery process as his injuries healed much more quickly than expected.
“For several years, I had been driving home late. I always loved to surprise my mom. I'd reach out of nowhere and tell her ‘Mom, just open the gate, I'm here'. So she was used to me reaching late. She was obviously very upset about the incident but she wasn't upset about me driving late as she knew it was a habit of mine. She never faulted me for it and that was very satisfying. That's probably why people say that family understands us the best. Accidents can happen with anyone, anytime,” Rishabh Pant pointed out.
“I'm glad that I was driving when the accident happened and not anyone else. If that was the case, then I don't know how I'd have reacted. At least now, I'm responsible for my mistake,” he maintained.
After his initial hospitalization in Dehradun, Rishabh Pant was airlifted to Mumbai. Following a thorough analysis of his medical condition, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) appointed a team of specialists who subsequently conducted surgeries on his injured knee.
Following his surgery, Rishabh Pant began his rehab process under the watchful eyes of the BCCI trainers – who gave specific instructions to him about his daily routine.
Slowly but steadily, Rishabh Pant took baby steps towards his return to cricket action. Once he found his feet and started walking, though not without crutches, he shared pictures with his millions of fans on social media, making them aware that he was on a comeback trail.
“So, my first step, we luckily had a terrace and that was my first step. I posted a picture also (on social media). So many people sent their love and blessings, and I'm really grateful to them. It was very helpful. So, I wanted to give them an update that I'm feeling slightly better,” he stated.
“I was focusing solely on my recovery process. Cut off myself from the world and I felt that at such a time, it helps me to recover faster. Because you've to do the same things day in and day out. it is a boring process. It's irritating, it's frustrating but you have to do it,” Rishabh Pant noted.
“Till the time I resume playing cricket, I don't want to plan too much for the future. I never dwell in the past, I want to stay in the present and do the best I can, which is to focus on my knee,” he continued.
The accident came at an inopportune time for Rishabh Pant. The youngster had already solidified his position in India's Test and ODI playing elevens.
Moreover, with the ODI World Cup being held in India in 2023, captain Rohit Sharma was grooming him for the finisher's role, especially after his fearless approach to batting made waves across the world.
As many former cricketers fell in love with his aggressive batting, he was a shoo-in in India's startling XI in ODIs.
However, as fate would have it, Rishabh Pant was forced to watch the action unfold from the sidelines, which he admitted was far tougher than playing the sport in front of thousands of spectators.
“I tried not to watch cricket a lot. I realised that what the coaches say is true, that it is tough to just watch from the outside. Because the IPL was on, Delhi was playing and I wasn't feeling good. I felt we could have done a lot of things differently. I wanted to discuss things with them but then I realised that I'm outside the team. When you're inside the team, things are different. You can control a lot of things. Sitting from outside, it's easy to make comments but the captain and coach will be having their own ideas. So it will only cause miscommunication if I also give my opinions,” Rishabh Pant said.
“I realised I was getting stressed and understood that I had to cut down on watching cricket. I did watch the Ashes later on, had a lot of fun as I loved England's new way of playing cricket. It was anyway my style of playing,” the southpaw remarked.
Widely regarded as the best wicketkeeper-batter in Tests, Rishabh Pant has scored 2169 runs in 54 innings in the whites, including five centuries and ten half-centuries. He has a stunning strike rate of 73.10 and averages 43.48 in the five-day format.
His injury-induced absence from cricket forced him to miss last season's Indian Premier League (IPL), the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia at home, the World Test Championship final in England, the 2023 Asia Cup and the ODI World Cup, and the ongoing five-match Test series against England in India.
Nonetheless, Rishabh Pant did swing his bat during an Independence Day program last year, which resulted in a severe reprimand from BCCI's trainers, who were monitoring his progress from injury.
“I had gone to Vijaynagar for Independence Day and a match was going on. I couldn't resist myself and played a few balls. Later I wondered why I had done that and obviously got scolded by my trainer. There were two options, I mean I knew that I'd get scolded but I also knew that this moment wouldn't come back again. So I thought I'll enjoy the moment and get the scoldings too,” remembered.
Despite missing out on major cricketing action and possibly a second life, Rishabh Pant remains unfazed by people's requests, who have repeatedly urged him not to drive, considering he barely survived the car crash.
“Self control is about the things you can handle. I will still drive because I love to. It's not like when a setback happens in life, you can't do that thing again. These days I hear it a lot from people, they tell me ‘don't drive much' and all. But nobody could have been more scared than me from that accident. At the same time, it doesn't mean that I'll give up on things that I love.
“These kind of setbacks happen in life. They are overcome by self-belief and my self-belief kept growing. Sometimes it even turned into an obsession. Even if nobody believes in you, if you have self-belief, I feel you can achieve anything,” Rishabh Pant signed off.
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