Rishabh Pant has been dropped from the Indian team for the upcoming ODI and T20I series against Sri Lanka. However, reports have asked him to report for NCA strength and conditioning.
Cricket experts believe that Pant’s future in white ball cricket is uncertain. Gambhir advised Pant about this.
Former India opener Gautam Gambhir believes that Pant needs to focus on Test cricket while he will have to wait to break into white-ball cricket. Compared to Pant’s Test runs, his ODIs and T20I runs are not that good.
These players are better than Rishabh Pant – Gambhir
Talking to Star Sports, Gautam Gambhir said- “Players like Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson, KL Rahul have done wicketkeeper-ing in ODIs, they are now doing better than Rishabh Pant. Look at Ishan Kishan, when he got a chance, he scored a double century in ODIs, so how can you ignore someone like him?”
Rishabh Pant’s performance in the year 2022 –
It may be noted that in 2022, Pant scored 364 runs in 25 T20s at an average of 21.41 at a strike rate of 132.84. In 12 ODIs this year, he scored 336 runs at an average of 37.33 and a strike rate of 96.55. But Pant has done brilliantly in Tests. He has scored 680 runs in 12 innings at an average of 61.81 and a strike-rate of 90.90.
Apart from Pant, right-handed opener KL Rahul has proved to be a flop across formats. After a poor performance in the T20I World Cup, Rahul is not a part of the T20I squad against Sri Lanka.
Although he is in the ODI team. With Rahul no longer the vice-captain, Hardik Pandya has been named as Rohit Sharma’s vice-captain.