Brain Lara Thinks There Is Excessive Pressure On Young Rishabh Pant
Mumbai: After a constant criticism over Pant, Former West Indies great Brian Lara believes excessive pressure on Rishabh Pant is unnecessary even though Virat Kohli-led Team India has kickstarted to form the blueprint of the final squad that will headline next year’s ICC World T20 in Australia. An underpressure Pant showed some resiliency in the 2nd T20I against the West Indies at the Greenfield International Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday by playing an instrumental knock (33 off 22 balls) to help India register a challenging 170-run total.
While MS Dhoni is on the break after India lost to New Zealand in semi-finals in the 2019 World Cup, Pant has been regarded as the touted successor of the veteran Indian gloveman behind the stumps. However, the promising young talent has a series of dreadful performances under his belt which many believe makes it for the amount of wrath he has been subjected to lately by the fans and his critics.
Whenever Pant comes to bat crowd starts cheering in the name of MS Dhoni and it seems like this gave him excessive pressure.
Former Windies skipper and full pundit – Lara, feels Pant just can’t be an overnight replacement for the legendary Dhoni and India can go with another wicketkeeper for the forthcoming World Cup. Lara said that Pant has created a lot of buzzes but he is a totally different player than Dhoni.
“Rishabh Pant came into the game creating a lot of excitement, he had a lot of aggression and the Indian public expects someone to replace (MS) Dhoni immediately and in the same fold but he is a totally different player,” Lara said while speaking at a cricket live show. “I know the time is critical with the World Cup just 8 or 9 months away and they may even go with another keeper but the excessive pressure on him is unnecessary,” he added.
In the last, match Pant and Sundar were in the receiving end from the crowd of Thiruvananthapuram as they both dropped the catches of the consecutive deliveries from Bhuvneshwar Kumar one-off Simmons and other of Lewis and Simmon gone ahead to win the match and stay not out till the end.
As skipper Kohli along with the Indian think tank has consistently backed the struggling Indian wicketkeeper, former West Indies captain also seconded the narrative by supporting the promising young talent.
“I agree with captain Virat Kohli on supporting Pant as this is a very successful Indian team and I remember the West Indies team 30 years ago we had guys in there who weren’t performing well but they were kept in the team because the team was doing very well and we had all the great players but you never heard about Gus Logie or Carl Hooper because they weren’t doing that well but they were allowed to mature and I feel Rishabh Pant should be allowed to mature,” Lara said.
The decider between these two teams will be played on December 11.
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