MIAMI: These are two guys at two different ends of the spectrum. One’s a phenomenal talent who is still lucky to be alive, let alone playing, while the other is an honest trier who keeps fighting.
Rishabh Pant and Arshdeep Singh are two completely different personalities, but if you’re to closely analyse India’s United States leg of the T20 World Cup –they are the two stars who have gone slightly under the radar.
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Arshdeep, of course, has won a Man of the Match award with a spell of 4/9 against the United States, but Pant’s contribution has almost going unnoticed. In all the three games that India won, the wicketkeeper-batter who is playing for India for the first time after his life-threatening injury late in 2022, played crucial knocks. 36 not out, 42 and 18 might not look huge, but if you put it in context, the importance becomes clearer.
Pant is batting at No. 3, a position that is always reserved for the crème-de-la-crème of any batting line-up. And in New York, Pant came into bat when India lost the early wicket of Virat Kohli with virtually nothing on the board.
The world knows Pant is a dynamite with the bat, but what made it special for him here was he wasn’t always at his destructive best. Yet, the southpaw never went below run a ball, in fact his 31-ball 42 against Pakistan was probably the best batting effort on the New York minefield by any batter.
Pant’s promotion to the No. 3 spot was the product of a brain-wave of captain Rohit Sharma, who seems to have meticulously prepared for this T20 World Cup after the heartbreak of the ODI World Cup in India. “The moment I saw Pant bat in the IPL, I knew where he would be batting in the World Cup,” Rohit said in one of his press conferences. The decision was communicated to the wicketkeeper-batter early and the 26-year-old has gone out of his way to justify the captain’s faith in him.
In New York before the first game, on a practice pitch which everyone was avoiding due to its uneven nature, Pant asked the throwdown expert to test him with vicious short balls from less than 22 yards. Pant was getting hit on the body a few times, but you could see that the lion-hearted cricketer was trying to overcome fear.
The team management was also looking to have the left-right combination going through the middle-order, something that Pant’s promotion facilitates. In his decision to promote Pant to No. 3, Rohit is in fact looking forward to the West Indies leg as well, where he wants to use the dasher’s counter-attacking abilities.
“The kind of ability he has, it’s always tough to find the right number for Pant. But with three right-handers in the top four, I thought it was nice to have him in the middle. And later on, in West Indies, when spin is going to play a big part, his counterattacking can come into picture in a big way. He has got an all-round game and we want to utilize that upfront, where he gets to play maximum balls along with some of the other experienced players,” Rohit said.
While Pant’s batting is crucial to India’s success going forward, Arshdeep’s ability to swing the new ball and deliver the yorker at the death are equally important. The fact that he is also a left-armer adds the much-needed variety to the pace attack, which has three more right-armers.
After doing well against Ireland, Arshdeep was entrusted to bowl the last over against Pakistan, where he did just enough to keep the desperate batters at bay. That was followed by his match-winning effort against USA and in all probability, if the team management decides to go with three specialist pacers in West Indies in the XI, he will be one of them.
Arshdeep, though, doesn’t want to think that far. “I remember what (batting coach) Vikram Rathour told us in the team meeting – ‘stay where your feet are’. So right now, we just stay in the present and prepare for that.”
For now, the Super-8s are “the present” and Arshdeep would surely love to be at the top of his game at the Kensington Oval on Thursday.