Former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta wants Rishabh Pant to keep his aggressive approach in the Test series against Sri Lanka rather than turn overly defensive against the hosts’ spin-heavy attack. He regards Pant’s ability to change a game as one of India’s biggest middle-order assets and feels he should put the spinners under pressure.
On his YouTube channel, Dasgupta said Pant should bat exactly as he usually does. He recalled a recent match in which Pant was overly defensive, and said he would prefer to see him dismissed going for a six than playing a forceful defensive shot.
Playing to strengths
Dasgupta, 49, said some batters have defence as their strength while for others it is attack. Pant, he believes, firmly belongs in the second group and should not drift from the style that made him so influential.
Close to a sixes landmark
Pant has scored 3,557 runs in 50 Tests at 43.37, with eight hundreds and 19 fifties. He has hit 97 Test sixes and needs three more to become the first Indian batter to reach 100 in the format.
He has been consistent in the current World Test Championship cycle, averaging above 50 across eight matches. In the recent warm-up against Sri Lanka Cricket XI, however, he made only 30 runs across two innings.
The first Test starts in Galle on August 15, where Pant’s approach to the spinners could be important to India’s start.
