Rohit Sharma on Rishabh Pant's workload management and fearless batting: 'He decides what he wants to do'

Indian captain Rohit Sharma said that the team management wants to be “extra careful” in its handling of Rishabh Pant who recently bounced back from a near-fatal car accident in 2022 to play for the national side. Pant suffered an injury scare in the recently concluded first Test against New Zealand at M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru when he was hit on the right knee with a ball while being on the field. Pant had major surgery on the same right left after the car accident and the incident led to swelling in their knee as he did not keep wickets from thereon.

Also read | India display grit at Chinnaswamy after 46 all out, but first Test proves a reality check

The wicket-keeping duties in the first Test for India were performed by Dhruv Jurel.

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India look to manage Pant’s workload

Explaining India’s decision to keep Pant away from wicket-keeping, Rohit said that the idea was to manage Pant’s workload and help the 27-year-old recover before the second Test in Pune.

“He has had a massive operation. We must be a little careful about where he is at and what he is to us. Even when he was batting, he was not comfortably running and was trying to only put the ball in the stands. When you are keeping, you need to bend every ball with your knee going down. And the wicket being what it was, we thought it was the right thing to do for him to stay inside and get 100% ready for the next one,” Rohit said in the post-match presentation ceremony.

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“With someone like him, we just need to be extra careful. Because he has had a lot of minor surgeries, one big surgery on his knee. He has also gone through a lot of trauma.”

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‘He decides what he wants to do’

Rohit also reflected on Pant’s maverick batting and added that the team management is fully behind his attacking style. Pant scored a boundary-filled 99 in the son innings which included multiple unconventional shots but missed out on a hundred after being bowled out by William O’Rourke.

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“To be honest, no one knows what goes on in his mind,” Rohit added. “He decides what he wants to do. And that is the kind of freedom we want to give to him because he has produced performances with that mindset. I don’t think there is anything that you need to speak to him about.

“Before the second innings, we just told him, ‘please understand the situation’ and stuff like that. But he wants to play in a certain way and we want to back that.”