Pant raises the bar, sets up grand finish

ON air, Dinesh Karthik came up with a lovely line to describe KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant match-altering 195-run stand on a lovely Monday afternoon sandwiched by lunch.

- SWAROOP SWAMINATHAN @Chennai

"Classical music," the cricketer-turned-pundit said. "at one end and hip-hop on the other end."

It kind of captured the contrasting 100s by both. If Rahul's was classy, Pant's was chancy, it resembled a man who kept winning at the poker table despite holding at least one deuce card on a lot of occasions. At one point, the stump mic even caught him disparaging himself. "I just need to middle, I don't need to do anything out of the ordinary," or something to that extent in Hindi (Karthik helped translate this to English).