The bubbling superstar of Indian cricket delivers yet another cameo while England’s scene-stealer was their invisible man
Even as England stumble-tripped through the desert sands of the Chennai pitch, it was, for two men, the best of times.
The first, Rishabh Pant, is the bubbling superstar of Indian cricket. Baby-faced, fearless; a pint-sized serving of warm devil-may care with a cocktail cherry of brash. Many, many, words have been said and written in India about his batting, even more about his wicket-keeping, with a role-call of experts, including Sunil Gavaskar, calling for him to be relieved of the gloves. “A specialist middle-order batsman at No 5,” Gavaskar dreamed, during the series against Australia. But India’s selectors, as England’s, are greedy. They want Pant to fill two spaces on the team sheet, good enough behind the stumps, much more than that with a bat. Not to mention a more than useful irritant to wind up unsuspecting opposition batsmen.
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