Get Him In There: Brad Hogg Urges Indian Management To Slot Rishabh Pant Back In The White-Ball Set-up

Former Australian left-arm leg-spinner Brad Hogg has called for the Indian team to include dynamic left-hand wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant in their white-ball set-up following his whirlwind performance against Australia in the recently concluded Test series.

Rishabh Pant’s stock as an international cricketer has gone through the roof following his back-to-back memorable knocks Down Under.

Pant, who was ignored in the first Test by the team-management in favor of a better keeper in Wriddhiman Saha, made a return to the side in Melbourne, and with his stellar knocks in the fourth innings of the Sydney and Brisbane Tests, he once again proved just why he is a match-winner and one of the most impactful cricketers going around.

Rishabh Pant smoked a brutal 118-ball 97 on the fifth-day SCG track, helping India draw the Test match. A week later, the 23-year-old bettered his performance as he smashed an unbeaten 89 to lead India to one of their greatest-ever triumphs in Australia’s fortress- Gabba.

These two knocks were important for Pant given the fact that he had come into the Test series after having been completely sidelined in white-ball cricket.

Following his inconsistency with the bat and poor keeping, Pant was dropped in favor of KL Rahul in January 2020, who has since then gone on to establish himself as the first-choice keeper in both ODIs and T20Is. Sanju Samson, on the other hand, has become the 2nd choice keeper. Samson, however, has failed to make the most of his opportunities in both New Zealand and Australia last year.

However, Brad Hogg feels that Rishabh Pant should be slotted back into the white-ball set-up and he feels that he should come at the expense of either Shreyas Iyer or Sanju Samson.

Hogg reckoned that Pant’s unorthodox strokeplay makes him a tricky customer to bowl at and he can prove to be the X-factor that Indian white-ball teams need in the middle-order.

”I would be putting him there right now because he has got the confidence and the belief. He has proven himself with two match-winning knocks in this Test series. You can’t get better than that playing for India on Australian soil. I would put him in place of Iyer. Keep your all-round options there for batting and bowling depth. He will be there for either Iyer or Sanju Samson,” Brad Hogg said on his Youtube channel.

“He is hard to bowl to because he plays a variety of shots that are different to any other batsman. Get him in there,” added Hogg.

Also Read: Removing Virat Kohli From Captaincy Would Destroy The Culture Of The Indian Team: Brad Hogg