The former pacer of the Australian side, Damien Fleming, has criticized the reckless batting from the wicket-keeper batter of the Indian side, Rishabh Pant, during the morning session of the third day of the fourth Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in the Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2024-25.
India was struggling with five down for 164 at the start of the new day. Rishabh Pant was playing sensibly in the first few overs against Scot Boland and the opposite captain, Pat Cummins, as both he and Ravindra Jadeja started to collect the runs with singles and doubles as the scorecards kept on moving.
The left-handed brutal batter pulled Cummins through the square leg region for a four. Boland was on his last over of the spell, as Cummins kept on keeping three men at the edge of the boundary-one of them was the deep third man in the form of Nathan Lyon.
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Rishabh Pant tried to reverse-scoop a delivery against Boland but failed to get a smooth connection of it. On the very next ball, he tried to go for the same unorthodox shot and ended in the hands of Lyon, who didn’t need to move an inch from his position. None of the fans at the stadium or sitting in India in the early morning took it gently, and neither were the pundits of the game.
Damien Fleming slams Rishabh Pant’s careless shot
The dismissal of the left-handed batter for a score of 28 runs in 37 deliveries at a strike rate of 75 with the help of three boundaries. Jadeja followed him soon, having trapped his leg before the stumps. The situation could have been worse for the touring side had the 127-run record stand for the eighth wicket between centurion Nitish Kumar Reddy and Washington Sundar didn’t save them.
Rishabh Pant wasn’t struggling with the runs at all, having collected those runs at a strike rate of over 75, while the opponent captain kept on going with the field placement for a long time to invite him to play the shot and the wicket at such a crucial stage of the game wasn’t welcomed warmly by many.
Damien Fleming felt that the visiting team management perhaps was expecting a far more mature innings from the Uttarakhand-born, instead of his reckless batting.
“That is crazy. We were just talking about the leaders of the Indian team having a big chat this morning. I tell you what, they wouldn’t have been talking about reckless batting like this. He got away with it the previous ball. Nathan Lyon takes a room service catch.” Fleming expressed on Channel Seven during commentary, as the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The former Indian captain, Sunil Gavaskar, was utterly disappointed with the shot selection as he addressed it as ‘stupid’ while he also reckoned that Rishabh Pant should have been walking into the opponent’s dressing room after getting out.
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“Stupid, stupid, stupid. You’ve got two fielders there, and you still go for that, you’ve missed the previous shot. And look where you’ve been caught. You’ve been caught at deep third man. That is throwing away your wicket. Not in the situation that India was in. You have to understand the situation as well, you cannot say that that’s your natural game.” Gavaskar highlighted on ABC Radio.
Rishabh Pant has not been in great touch in the ongoing BGT 2024-25, having gathered just 124 runs in six innings at an average of below 21 with no half-century yet.