Indian captain Rohit Sharma, while praising Rishabh Pant's previous successes due to his high-risk style of playing the game, said the wicketkeeper-batter needs to figure out the right way of doing things for himself and the team.
The remarks by Rohit come in the wake of Pant's two terrible dismissals in the 184-run defeat to Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. In the first innings, Pant had made a scoop shot to third man and had fallen for 28 off 37 balls, which had brought him severe criticism from the legendary Sunil Gavaskar.
On day five's play, Pant mistimed a pull shot to deep mid-wicket off Travis Head after showing remarkable restraint, and walked back for 30 off 104 balls. His dismissal triggered a collapse for India, as they were bowaled out for 155 in a chase of 340.
"There hasn't been any discussion about today. We are all disappointed. But again, look, Rishabh Pant needs to understand what is required from himself more than any one of us telling him. It's about him understanding and figuring out what is the right way to go about it. In the past, he's given us a lot of success doing what he does. So as a captain, there is a kind of mixed reaction to that.".
"Sometimes you want to go back that thought of him playing the way he plays; sometimes, when things don't look so good, it frustrates everybody. That is what it is, that's reality. It's the success and failure that need to be balanced about it. As captain it's difficult to have a conversation when it has given him lot of success as well".
"It is more about him figuring out the right way of doing things, it is about the situations as well. The situations of the game at some places, if there's a risk percentage, you want to take that risk? You want to allow the opposition to come back into the game? These are the things he has to figure out for himself," said Rohit during the post-match press conference.
With Pant not being in the best of his run-making self in the series so far, Rohit added, "I've known Rishabh for a long time and understand his cricket as well. In terms of conversations, no way I can say I've not had a chat with him or he doesn't understand what the term expects. He understands that. But things that he does gives him results as well, just the fine line between telling him not to do those things or telling him to do those things."
India's selection of the playing eleven left everyone curious, as Shubman Gill was ignored for Washington Sundar. With Gill missing out, Rohit moved to his preferred opening slot and KL Rahul slotted into number three. According to Rohit, the reason for omitting Gill was to provide more bowling options in the playing eleven and retain a bit of batting depth.
"I had a chat with him (Gill), there's no way when you're leaving someone out, for whatever reason it is, you will not have a chat. The chat with him was clear; he was not dropped. Just wanted to have extra bit of cushion in the bowling and we opted for an allrounder, which shouldn't weaken our batting line-up."
"Comprising a batter for a bowler is not something I wanted to do. We wanted to bat as deep as possible, along with that have a bowling attack which can take 20 wickets. We considered everything, and we ended up compromising him unfortunately.
"With him there was never a doubt that he wasn't batting well or he was not scoring runs, or anything like that. Just to get that combination where we can cover both bases - batting and bowling, we opted for that," he concluded.
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