For five years, Rishabh Pant’s display picture on Whatsapp was a quote which read, “Everyone works to be seen. I work to disappear.” It was put up when the world went into lockdown during the pandemic and Pant found himself sitting at home, unsure about his future in the Indian team. He would subsequently turn things around with two magical knocks in Sydney and Brisbane in 2020-21. Cut to March, 2025. Pant decided to uninstall Whatsapp and keep his mobile phone switched off unless he needed to reach out. It was only a tiny part of the whole process to remove the clutter from his mind after going through the most chaotic season in his cricket career. As he did the now-viral front-flip celebration after scoring a century in the first innings of the Headingley Test last week — just like he did upon reaching the milestone in his last IPL game this year — Pant would have been satisfied at having turned things around. Pant’s last three innings across formats have all been centuries, a performance that his most ardent fan would have struggled to imagine 45 days ago. On paper, coming back to form looks like a simple process, but people close to him say those were the longest 45 days Pant has endured as a cricketer.
Devender Sharma, his childhood coach at Sonnet Club in Delhi, says Pant realised things were getting out of hand after getting out in a flippant manner in the MCG Test, a dismissal now famous for Sunil Gavaskar describing it as “stupid, stupid, stupid”.
In the following Test, Pant decided to knuckle down, taking blows on his body while scoring 40 runs in the first innings on a spicy Sydney pitch before reverting to his instincts to score 61 off 33. Yet, at that moment, nobody could tell which Pant was the real one. Having subsequently lost his place in the ODI XI and enduring a wretched run in the IPL, Pant asserted in an exclusive interview to TOI that he was practicing so hard in the nets that he had developed blisters on his palms. On the sidelines of the interview, he quietly said, “I have spoken to a lot of experts. The more I think, the more this phase will keep engulfing me.” He took a decision to isolate himself from all the criticism and noise. Soham Desai, Team India’s strength and conditioning coach till before the England tour, said Pant put himself through a punishing routine when he was benched from the XI during the Champions Trophy.
“He did the most intense sessions, day in and day out. He dragged me into the gym whenever he was free. He didn’t care about fatigue or workload programmes. All he said was he needed to keep working on himself. On the day of the final, he came to me with some kind of guilt in his mind and asked if he could take the day off. I said it was high time that he did,” Desai told TOI. “Pant has so much in reserve that he will be fine for at least a year without having to do anything extraordinary. That’s why you see him moving around so well despite scoring two hundreds and keeping wickets for so long in the Headingley Test,” Desai added. In spite of the punishing training, results eluded him. The lightbulb moment happened when he reached out to Devender Sharma a couple of days before the enforced break in the IPL due to cross-border tensions with Pakistan.
“When he called me, he kept saying that he was training very hard. I had seen his practice videos put up by Lucknow Super Giants on social media. I told him it didn’t seem like he was working on his defence. He has an outstanding defence. I told him to play close to his body and trust his technique to middle the ball more often,” Devender told TOI. The conversation went on for a couple of hours. “The idea wasn’t to discourage him from playing aggressive cricket, which comes naturally to him. The discussion was to reinstill the belief that he could score quickly and score big even by looking to hit in front of the wicket. That’s what he has done for most of his career,” Devender said. Following the conversation, Pant confessed he felt good about his batting for the first time in months when he smacked Kagiso Rabada over long off and flicked him over square-leg for twin sixes. He knew he was back in the game. It was, therefore, no surprise that after one of his failed ramp shots at Headingley, Pant was caught on the stump mic chiding himself. “There is no need to play this shot. You can still get runs hitting in front of the wicket,” he was heard muttering to himself. Every phase in Pant’s career has been a fascinating story. This one is no different. He is clearly India’s most consistent and prolific Test batter in the last half a decade. Yet, he always leaves you wanting more. He has managed to revive his own batting but the real job starts now. It needs to be seen if he can still put his head down and carry the mantle of being the most established Test batter in the lineup. In England, Team India needs him more than ever.
