Musicians Kaushiki Chakraborty and Purbayan Chatterjee have torn into India wicketkeeper batter Rishabh Pant after an advertisement featuring him seemed to insult Indian classical music. The advertisement made its television debut during the T20 World Cup in Australia in October.

In the commercial for the fantasy sports platform Dream XI, Rishabh Pant could be seen portraying the role of a failed musician if he hadn't become a cricket star. “Thank God, I followed my dream,” Rishabh Pant could be heard saying in the advertisement.

Blasting Rishabh Pant for “earning a fortune” by disrespecting Indian Classical Music, Kaushiki termed the advertisement as “disgusting and ugly” besides calling the 25-year-old batter as a “fool” who was mocking his own country's rich legacy.

“I don't have words to express my disgust and the ugliness of this commercial. Disrespecting your legacy makes you look like a fool, Rishabh Pant,” singer Kaushiki Chakraborty tweeted.

“This is the music of Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. I am sure you earn a fortune by doing this, but it is worth?” she added.

“I am practising Indian Classical Music and I don't follow cricket but I've never disrespected your field of work. When u haven’t been trained to understand something atleast be sensible enough to be respectful towards it. Making fun of your heritage makes you look like a fool,” Kaushiki Chakraborty wrote on the microblogging website.

Meanwhile, sitarist Purbayan Chatterjee released a statement on Twitter in which he declared, “The advertisement portrayed Indian Classical Music in a comical and slightly disparaging light. I am shocked and pained to see this as this is not the first time this has happened. I feel this cannot be condoned. This is a great musical art form, greatly respected and revered and honoured across the world. And if you talk about the cricket fraternity, then legends like Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar are great proponents of this art form.”

“Indian Classical Music is part of our national identity and as self respecting citizens of India we should respect our rich cultural identity……. Which is revered the world over,” he stated.

Coming back to Rishabh Pant's cricketing career, Rishabh Pant featured for India in the T20 World Cup in Australia in November. While he was included in the squad for the ongoing ODIs against Bangladesh in the neighboring country, the BCCI subsequently released him upon his rest request.

Though Rishabh Pant isn't a part of Team India which is currently in Bangladesh, he has received flak from several quarters due to his dismal show in white-ball cricket. Last month, Rishabh Pant had a disastrous tour of New Zealand where he made less than 50 runs in four knocks across formats.

Despite his growing number of critics, Rishabh Pant found support from veteran India batter Dinesh Karthik who urged the fans, former cricketers, and his critics that they shouldn't judge him based on his recent displays with the bat.

According to Dinesh Karthik, Rishabh Pant's performances in ODIs weren't too bad and the team management should persist with him for a few more months before taking a call on his ODI and T20I future.

“We need to look at it separately. In one-day cricket in the last 10 innings, he averages 45-plus. He obviously got the match-winning score of 120 (125 not out) in the recently concluded series in England. So he's done very well for himself and when someone has done very well for himself, you cannot look at him and say ‘Oh he should be from one-day cricket',” Dinesh Karthik said.

“I think, you know, you need to give him the opportunity to be out there and do well and if he doesn't do well, then move on. But you can't just move away because he has done something else in another format. I think that's something that's unfair to the player as well,” Dinesh Karthik added.

“I think because of the amount of cricket, especially T20 that is played, obviously, they are comparing that and adding those scores and saying, ‘Oh, he hasn't done well'. That's not how we need to look at things,” Dinesh Karthik opined.

In Rishabh Pant's absence, KL Rahul has been keeping wickets for India in the ODIs in Bangladesh.

While KL Rahul scored an explosive half-century in the first match, he put up a mediocre batting show in the next game, making only 14 runs off 28 deliveries. Moreover, KL Rahul has proved ineffective as a wicketkeeper,  dropping a couple of catches behind the wickets that have cost India dearly. The Men in Blue have already lost the series and are attempting to avoid a 3-0 whitewash in Chattogram.