Pant Must Sharpen Up His Glovework To Follow Dhoni

Chetan Narula offers his analytical assessment of the reasoning behind India’s decision to omit a rising star from their World Cup squad this summer

Something odd happened this past week in the Indian Premier League. As is his wont, MS Dhoni took the game to the last over. Chennai Super Kings were chasing 162 against Royal Challengers Bangalore, and needed 26 runs off the last six balls.

Dhoni, finished with 84 not out off 48 balls, smacking 24 off five balls in the final over, but failed to finish the game and Chennai lost by a solitary run.

A day later, Rishabh Pant scored 78 not out off 36 balls as he marshalled Delhi Capitals to the top of the table. It wasn’t a passing-of-the-baton moment, not just yet. Nevertheless, it was worth pondering upon.

Make no mistake, Dhoni is the greatest finisher this game has ever seen, never mind those rare misses. Also, there is little doubt that once Dhoni hangs up his boots, Pant will take over the keeper/batsman mantle from him across all formats and perhaps rise to similar dizzying heights as concerns stardom in Indian cricket.

The question to ask here, then, is why Pant was left out of India’s 2019 ODI World Cup squad?

Roll back the years and recall what Dhoni was like when he first burst out on the international scene. Exuberant, attacking and unorthodox – back then, it differentiated him from the glorious, textbook cricketers India boasted of.

In a way, he was the building block of where Indian cricket stands today – confident in its charismatic self, pushing boundaries regularly and finding a new comfort zone with each outing, whether on the international stage or even in the Indian Premier League.

Dhoni’s arrival on the scene was the build-up to the T20 era. Thanks to the inaugural World T20 triumph in South Africa in 2007, he was already a household name by the time of the first IPL season.