I Love Playing Tests, Says Rishabh Pant

Rishabh Pant arrived in international cricket as a white-ball specialist. He made his much-awaited debut during the T20I series in West Indies in 2017. But he is yet to prove himself in limited-overs cricket in international arena. While he is one of the best batsmen in IPL in the last few years, the wicketkeeper-batsman is just not managing to crack the code in international cricket.

Earlier this year, he lost his place in the playing eleven of the ODI and T20I teams. KL Rahul is now the designated wicketkeeper-batsman of the team and the way he is performing, one cannot see Rishabh Pant getting a chance anytime soon. But unlike white-ball cricket, he did not take long to hit the ground running in red-ball cricket.

In his maiden Test season, he scored centuries in Australia and England and also scored couple of fifties against West Indies at home. And recently, the Delhi star said that contrary to the belief of the fans, he loves playing Tests more.

“I love playing Tests. You can give yourself time. Mostly you can test yourself in Test cricket. When I was playing four-day first-class games, I had heard it is the real test but when I played five-day cricket…it was like you need to put in that extra effort,” Rishabh Pant said during an Instagram Live chat session with his IPL side Delhi Capitals’ official handle.

At the start of the home season last year, he had conceded his place in the Test team to Wriddhiman Saha but was recalled during the series in New Zealand. However, the youngster failed to deliver in testing conditions as India lost both the games of the series.

Rishabh Pant also spoke about his days of struggle. The Roorkee-born star said he used to take a bus at 2 o’clock in the night to travel all the way to Delhi for practice.

“They (Uttarakhand) did not have a cricket team at that point. So I used to take the bus at 2 am in the night. That time it used to take 6 hours by road. It was difficult during winters as it was too cold. There was fog also. It’s been a good journey (as I look back). At the end of the day, you have to work hard to achieve your goal,” said Rishabh Pant.

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