Pant's on fire

Rishabh Pant is setting records with his bat; his strike rate is audacious. With his wild-card style and victory somersaults, he is the maverick Indian cricket needs

- Rudraneil Sengupta

Who is India's most successful Test batter today? If not for his exuberant twin centuries in India's first Test against England this week, Rishabh Pant might not have been the most obvious answer to that question. Yet, it is him.

This compact bundle of muscle with a maverick batting style that can be deceptively technical or totally outrageous stands a mile apart from all other Indian batters.

Since his debut in 2018, Pant has scored 3,200 runs at an average of nearly 45 and a strike rate just above 74. That's better than the now-retired Virat Kohli, who, with 2,140 runs, comes in second (others such as KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Rohit Sharma all have aggregates far lower than 2,000 runs).

Pant's strike rate is audacious too (everyone else in the top five has a strike rate in the 40s). What a joy to see the 27-year-old storm the stage as he is doing.