Young talented Indian wicket-keeper batsman Rishabh Pant carved a special place in the history of Indian cricket and also in the heart of every Indian cricket fan when he played a match-winning knock of 89* to help India storm the Gabba fortress in a record-breaking fashion.
Not just this, the 23-year-old also completed 1000 Test runs in the least amount of innings (27) for an Indian wicket-keeper batsman, breaking the record of legendary Indian wicket-keeper batsman MS Dhoni.
Pant’s knock became more special as he was going through the worst phase of his career. That phase had commenced when he first lost his place to KL Rahul in the playing XI from January onwards after getting injured in the first ODI against Australia.
Later, he wasn’t given an opportunity to be tried against New Zealand in February and then had a poor Test series, which was followed by an injury. However, in July, Pant spent considerable time with the former Indian cricketer Suresh Raina in Ghaziabad and Delhi.
After Rishabh Pant’s heroics in Australia, Suresh Raina opened up at that time and stated that Pant has been working a lot on his fitness with him and the mental side of his game. Raina also revealed the goal of Rishabh Pant, who wants to become the ‘best wicket-keeper batsman in the world’.
“He did a lot of fitness work with me. With his batting, it wasn’t technical at all. It was more about getting into the right mind-set and feeling good about his cricket and his enjoying his game,”
Raina feels that Pant talked about his goal with a lot of conviction and belief like never before. Raina said:
“I really didn’t have much to do with it. He is a young cricketer bursting with talent who in my view is set to become a great player for India. Back in June he’d just come off a not so good time with the bat. There was a lot of talk about him. So, he just wanted a break from it all, from the media and from everything. All he wanted me to do was listen. He wasn’t looking for me to give anything, forget a solution,”
Last year, Rishabh Pant had also talked about the great experience he had with Suresh Raina when the duo worked-out together as Raina taught him a lot of things related to cricket on-field and off it. In an Instagram session on CSK’s official channel, Raina had said:
“It’s been a good experience because with him (Raina) you can learn a lot of things. He is a left-handed batsman. You have got that brotherhood. He teaches me a lot of things, on and off the field situations. We discuss a lot of things and it’s helping me,”
