In Test cricket, Rishabh Pant’s presence is a psychological trigger. Captains instinctively pull fielders back, and bowlers suddenly forget the lengths they’ve hit all morning. Long before “Bazball” became a marketing term, there was Pant-a one-man wrecking ball who dismantled the traditional red-ball manual.
Pant hijacked contests in whites. Whether it was the final day miracle at the Gabba or the first innings blitz in Ahmedabad, Pant made a mockery of the situation. The age of the ball or the state of the pitch rarely mattered. India won because Pant simply refused to play the game on anyone’s terms but his own.
And yet, for all that audacity, Indian cricket is now facing an uncomfortable reality: the same batter looks oddly unsure of himself in white-ball cricket.
The numbers have been rehearsed often enough to feel cruel.
Pant has played 31 ODIs and 76 T20Is since 2017, a year after his U19 World Cup exploits. His ODI average hovers at 33.50. In T20Is, it drops to 23.25, with a strike rate that barely scrapes past acceptable in the modern game (127.26). Among Indian batters with over 50 T20I appearances in the top seven, no one averages less.
The IPL tells a similar story. In nine seasons, Pant has crossed 400 runs just four times. In IPL 2025, carrying the weight of a Rs 27 crore price tag, he managed 269 runs at a strike rate under 140.
Once spoken of as an all-format inevitability, Pant now finds himself drifting towards a corner. He hasn’t played a T20I since July 2024. His last ODI appearance came in August. He was part of the ODI squad when South Africa came visiting earlier this month but didn’t play a game. In both that series and the Champions Trophy earlier this year, India leaned towards KL Rahul instead.
Sources tell India Today that Pant will not be part of the ODI plans for the New Year series against New Zealand either. The message is clear: the selectors are already casting their net wider, with Dhruv Jurel, Jitesh Sharma and Ishan Kishan forcing their way into the conversation through consistency rather than reputation.
For a player who once bristled at comparisons between his red-ball and white-ball records – “I’m 24-25 years old. You can compare when I am 30 or 32,” he said in 2022 – time suddenly feels less forgiving.
The competition is deeper. The calendar is tighter. And the patience that once accompanied promise has all but evaporated.
IS PANT MORE SUITED TO TESTS?
Watch Pant bat in Tests and a pattern emerges quickly. There are men inside the ring. There are gaps in front of the wicket. There is room to swing freely without the punishment of immediate consequence. Even when he mistimes, the ball often lands safe.
White-ball cricket is the opposite. The field pushes back. The deep square-leg waits. The long-off beckons. The same swing that clears the rope in Tests now dies into a catcher’s hands. The margin for error collapses. And Pant, whose game is built on instinct rather than calibration, finds himself operating in a format that demands precision first and freedom later.
While there is merit to the argument that Pant’s game is “more suited” to Test cricket, former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta stresses that it’s more mental than technique and skills.
“It’s mental. It’s absolutely mental,” Dasgupta tells IndiaToday.in.
“There’s no two ways about it. He just has to go out there and do what he does best – which is to destroy opposition bowling. Don’t worry too much. Don’t make things complicated.”
That simplicity is why Dasgupta sees a clear echo of Virender Sehwag in Pant.
“I see a lot of Viru in him – simple, uncomplicated, unapologetic batting. He is who he is.”
THE FORCED BREAK
When Pant smashed a match-winning hundred against England in England in 2022, it felt like a turning point. He was beginning to slow his game without suffocating it, choosing moments rather than manufacturing them. For the first time, it looked like he was learning how to win white-ball matches, not just dominate passages.
And then, in December 2022, everything stopped.
The road accident that nearly took his life also wiped out 18 months of cricket. Formats built on rhythm punish interruption brutally. When Pant returned, the ecosystem had changed. The learning curve he had just begun to climb had reset.
“I thought, at that time, he was getting into the white-ball mode, getting to understand his game, and unfortunately this happened,” Dasgupta says. “That also set him back in terms of his evolution in white-ball cricket.”
THE WEIGHT OF TALENT
Pant’s greatest strength – his ability to do everything – may also be his biggest obstacle, according to Dasgupta.
“One of the challenges for somebody as talented as he is,” Dasgupta explains, “is sometimes you can think, ‘I can do this, I can do that, I can do everything’, which he can.”
“But, it’s like a bowler who has a lot of variations. At the end of the day, it’s your stock ball that is going to come good on most days. So, you need to know your stock ball. What is that USP of yours?
“That’s something that he needs to figure out. If he knows, it’s brilliant. Unfortunately, I am not too sure whether he knows,” the former wicketkeeper adds.
What about his role? Pant has been largely playing in the middle-order, flirting with top-order experiments in the IPL.
“In T20 cricket, is he a top-three batter? Or is he a middle-order batter or is he a finisher? What’s he? He needs to answer these questions.”
The irony is that Dasgupta has no doubt about the answer.
“As far as I am concerned, he is a top-three batter in T20I cricket. In ODIs, he is a good No.4 or No.5.”
But Pant, the player, seems caught between instructions, expectations, and his own instincts. When he walks in early, he feels compelled to accelerate. When he walks in late, he tries to manufacture impact. In trying to be everything, he becomes nothing.
The irony of Pant’s career is that the format in which he appears most reckless is the one where he feels most secure. And the formats built on instant impact are the ones that have quietly robbed him of certainty.
Pant does not need reinvention. He needs conviction.
That conviction, Deep Dasgupta believes, will only come the old-fashioned way – through repetition, runs, and rhythm. While his sublime 70 against Gujarat in the Vijay Hazare Trophy offered a flicker of his old self, a scratchy 22 against Saurashtra on Monday served as a reminder of how fleeting that rhythm remains.
“I think he just needs to bat, and bat. He got a excellent 70-odd for Delhi. He just needs to keep scoring runs, playing white-ball cricket wherever he gets the opportunity – domestic or otherwise – and learn his trade, learn what suits him.”
At 28, with his Test legacy already secure, the question is no longer whether Rishabh Pant can succeed in white-ball cricket. It is whether Indian cricket – and Pant himself – are willing to give clarity the same patience they once gave chaos.
– Ends
