Rishabh Pant’s season keeps looping back to the same point. A punchy 68* against Sunrisers Hyderabad on a slow surface felt like the breakthrough. A breezy 43 from 23 in the high-scoring chase versus Punjab hinted at momentum. Then, on Wednesday in Jaipur, he nicked off third ball and Lucknow Super Giants slipped to a fifth defeat in seven. The pattern is hard to miss, and the conversation around Pant – captain, No. 3 and lightning rod – shows no sign of cooling.
Key numbers first. Seven innings, 147 runs, strike-rate 132.43, two scores of note. Those figures sit sharply against the campaigns of fellow captains Shreyas Iyer (208 runs at 182.45) and Rajat Patidar (230 at 212.96). They also help explain why outside voices keep circling the same theme: clarity, or a lack of it.
“He wants to play with freedom. We see how he plays all his cricket – he’s very instinctive. He’s probably feeling the pinch as much as everyone,” Justin Langer admitted after the loss to Rajasthan. “He’s in that pivotal position at No. 3… I think that’s the style of cricket he wants to play, and he’ll be as frustrated as anyone that it didn’t come off today.”
On the TimeOut show, Dale Steyn suggested the left-hander is “playing more than one game in his head right now” – part self, part imitation of what other successful skippers are doing. Faf du Plessis, analysing the dismissal ball-by-ball, drilled into method rather than mechanics.
“You look at innings like that – who can we look who does that well? So how many times out of ten if you put Virat Kohli in that situation is he going to play in a tempo that’s going to be: I’m not going to face dot balls; I’m going to hit the ball along the ground; I’m going to be 60 not out… and that’s a picture for you on tough wickets when the scoreboard is saying 160,” du Plessis argued. “High intensity. Drops the risk a little bit. Hits gaps, hits fours, runs really hard, no dot balls. That is a very modern way of playing.”
The South African then zoomed out to the wider captaincy landscape. “A lot of teams are talking about how you must be aggressive, how you must take the game on. And, as a captain, you feel that responsibility lies with you to demonstrate that,” he said. “Great examples: Rajat Patidar is leading the way that the RCB batting line-up’s playing, and Shreyas Iyer is leading the way [with] the style of batting [for PBKS].”
Former India selector Saba Karim, looking at the season as a whole, places Pant’s stop-start returns down to something more fundamental. “Rishabh Pant’s problem lies in the fact that he’s yet to find his template for white-ball cricket,” Karim told the same show. In other words: the identity that came so naturally in Test match chases has not fully transferred to the shorter forms.
What, then, is realistic in the short term? LSG’s middle order is light on experience; the local talent is gifted but raw; and the Powerplay, so far, has not delivered the buffer Pant might crave. On a tricky Jaipur surface – two-paced, cutters gripping – a quieter approach may have been worth its weight.
“You almost can’t blame Pant [for] thinking ‘I need to do the same’. But tonight it wasn’t there; tonight you needed just a calm head, just to go…” du Plessis trailed off, the point already made.
Lucknow travel to Chennai next, a venue not famed for generosity to stroke-makers on slow evenings. Pant will arrive with the same conundrum and, one suspects, the same intent. Whether intent morphs into a sustainable template may well decide LSG’s season – and perhaps his own sense of calm.
