T20 World Cup: Living on the edge, Rishabh Pant style

The ball often doesn’t go where Rishabh Pant wants to. Make peace with it and you might begin to wrap your head around how Pant really goes about batting. Pakistan bowlers surely didn’t get that memo, or else the field wouldn’t have been so straight at the start. Conventional isn’t Pant’s style anyway. And on a devious New York pitch where sooner or later a ball will get you, holding back makes even less sense. Pant understood that, threw caution to the wind and walked out of a batting wreck with an innings-topping 42 to once again show why he is such a good fit at No.3 in T20s.

It was an approach fraught with confusing consequences though, and a fair share of heart-in-the-mouth moments for Indian fans. Mohammad Amir was getting the ball to seam, luring Pant into a drive that caught a healthy edge but probably too healthy to fly wide of Iftikhar Ahmed’s outstretched hand at first slip on the first ball of the sixth over. Next ball, and this time Pant hedged his bets on a whip off his legs but the ball caught the leading edge and speared over covers, prompting Usman Khan to valiantly scram back and attempt the catch peering over his shoulder. He couldn’t but Pant still wasn’t done giving the shudders.

First ball of the ninth over, Imad Wasim went full and wide to Pant, prompting a slog sweep that again caught a top edge but fell just short of Khan running in from deep square leg. That Pant wasn’t dissuaded by any of these was evident by the way he kept trying to reverse Wasim. Or keeling over, paddling a full, angling ball from Haris Rauf to the left of the fielder at short fine-leg for a boundary. Shots like these tend to have a longer lasting effect than the more traditional boundaries — first over mid-off, next picked off his legs and eased to fine-leg — bookending it.

But that’s what Pant is about. Not much of a presence by way of stance or backlift, with that still head giving away very little of what goes inside it, Pant has a way of hoodwinking bowlers into believing he is walking into their trap. Amir clearly had the upper hand in each of the seven deliveries bowled to Pant, but he still scored 14 runs off him before holing out to Babar Azam. That’s a strike rate of 200 in an innings that finished at six runs per over, where no other batter had crossed 20. More impressive is that overall strike rate of 135 on a day when Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Shivam Dube, Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja didn’t get starts.

Unlike Pant, all of them tend to bat straighter. That would have been ideal on any other track but not on that New York pitch, and definitely not when the ball is seaming. Luck played a role, but crucial was the way Pant let the ball come on to him till the last second. Playing behind the wicket is an effective way to offset the perils of trying to present the full face of the bat. The channel outside off-stump remains his weakness, but Pant’s brilliance lies in batting around it. He cuts and drives with pomp, but also slogs, reverse sweeps and ramps. Six fours, half of them streaky but effective, underline what Pant brings to the table even on a lean day like this.