6 min readMar 24, 2024 11:29 AM IST
First published on: Mar 23, 2024 at 05:06 PM IST
It wasn’t a fairy-tale return to cricket with the bat or as captain. That would perhaps have been too surreal even for a man who has beaten all odds to get back to a cricket arena this quickly from where he was a couple of years ago: knee at a right angle, collapsed inside a crumpled car, fearing for his life, and screaming in agony in the nights at the hospital in the ensuing days.
For a man who admitted at toss how “emotional” the return to competitive cricket has been, Rishabh Pant batted as if he wanted to entertain the crowd with every ball. Itching to run down the track to the spinners, trying to slam the seamers, it was some sight.
He collapsed his right knee for the first ball, attempting a cut off Harpreet Brar but couldn’t connect. He dabbed the second ball past midwicket for a single and crossed over with a smile. The third was when the fun began.
He walked down the track, but Brar had perhaps sensed his approach and dipped the ball shorter. But Pant, as is his wont, adjusted by taking the bottom hand off the handle, and swiping the ball away one-handed to the on side. Next over he tried to go down to the leg spinner Rahul Chahar, but again he had telegraphed his eager intent too early and the bowler adjusted the length. The ball missed the bat to ricochet off his body.
Will Pant adjust his approach? Nope. A shorter skidding ball arrived from Chahar and Pant pulled out his signature on-side walloping swat – where he doesn’t quite pull, doesn’t quite flat-bat it or thump it, but uses a mixture of wrists and power – a cross of Kohli’s swat-flick and Dhoni’s helicopter swirl, and extended his arm all the way high above his head. The ball still didn’t have the legs though but Harshal Patel running to his left at deep midwicket fumbled the catch and it ran away past the boundary. Was the home crowd cheering or crying in agony, it was hard to tell.
Finally, off his 12th ball, Pant decided not to try anything but just react to the ball. The result was a dreamy cover drive off Patel, with Pant holding his pose. The satisfaction he must have felt isn’t hard to guess, and there was no need to guess anything about the crowd’s roar of approval.
But that approach lasted just one ball. That delivery in fact. Off he ran down the pitch again next ball, moving outside leg as well, to drive Patel for a couple more.
Mohali: Delhi Capitals’ Rishabh Pant before the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 cricket match between Delhi Capitals and Punjab Kings, at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Cricket Stadium in Mohali, Saturday, March 23, 2024. (PTI Photo/Arun Sharma)(
The next ball though ended the Pant fun. It was the slower short ball that Patel used judiciously to get into the Indian team in the past and Pant arched back and proceeded to react to it as if it were a regular pacy short ball. He tried to upper cut it but the lack of pace meant the ball ballooned to backward point for a dolly.
Pant raised his bat and just when it seemed he was going to crash it into his pads in disappointment, he eased up, let the hands go through gentler, pulling out of that emotion rather quickly. He has said that he was going to try and enjoy every moment in his second innings, and there was no use fretting about a dismissal on his return.
Busy when behind the stumps
On field, as a wicketkeeping captain, he was his usual busy self. Right at the start, within a couple of deliveries from Ishant Sharma, he caught on to the fact that the ball was moving and shouted as much to a team-mate that he is going to keep the slip on for a while. Later, in the 11th over, he was standing up to medium pacer Sumit Kumar when Jitesh Sharma missed a glance. Pant had moved briskly down the leg, but wasn’t clean in collecting the ball properly and that extra second cost him the stumping as Jitesh’s back foot scrambled back in time.
But he would get his chance again in the 13th over when Jitesh missed a reverse sweep to an outside-off ball from Kuldeep Yadav. Pant made no mistakes this time, whipping off the bail, and also pointing to the square-leg umpire how Jitesh had taken out his back leg out of the crease in trying to hold balance. There was a big smile as he walked towards the bowler. All seemed well with his world but Sam Curran and then Liam Livingstone would turn the game around again.
Pant would catch Shashank Singh in the 19th over and immediately passionately address the team huddle. Not that it helped as David Warner would drop a dolly next ball, and Sumit Kumar would start the final over with two wides and serve a length ball that Livingstone would dispatch into the long-on stands. Pant would yank out his glove, ruffle his hair, and walk back to the hutch.
Mohali: Delhi Capitals’ captain Rishabh Pant plays a shot during the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 T20 cricket match between Delhi Capitals and Punjab Kings, at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, in Mohali, Saturday, March 23, 2024. (Express photo by Kamleshwar Singh) 
Mohali: Delhi Capitals’ Rishabh Pant before the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 cricket match between Delhi Capitals and Punjab Kings, at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Cricket Stadium in Mohali, Saturday, March 23, 2024. (PTI Photo/Arun Sharma)(
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