Rishabh Pant made a name among the greats of the game as he became only the second wicket-keeper batter in the history of the game to score a a century in both the innings of a Test match. The left handed batter registered scores of 134 and 118 in the two innings of the match but his efforts eventually went down in vain as India failed to defend a total of 371 in the fourth innings.
Pant, however, has had a remarkable turnaround having gone from a rare poor spell of form in Test series against Australia earlier in the year to warming the bench in the Champions Trophy and later failing to score big in his maiden outing as the captain of Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL.
In Australia, Pant managed to score only 255 runs at an average of 28.33 in the five matches. His innings included just 24 boundaries and 6 sixes which is a rarity for the southpaw who often takes the attack to the bowlers in the longer format of the game.
Rishabh Pant’s road to coming back to form:
According to a new report by The Times of India, Rishabh Pant realised that something was wrong with his batting after failing with a ramp shot in the first innings of the Melbourne Test — a dismissal which later became infamous due to former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar’s comment “Stupid, stupid, stupid”.
From then until he finally demonstrated his true potential in the Leeds Test, it was a long journey for Pant, who had already experienced many highs and lows in his career. In March 2025, the batter uninstalled WhatsApp from his phone and kept his phone switched off unless he needed to contact someone.
This was reportedly an attempt to remove the clutter from his mind after going through a chaotic cricketing season. The batter also went through a ‘punishing’ routine after being benched from the Indian team during Champions Trophy which was described by Soham Desai, India’s strength and conditioning coach till before the England series.
Speaking to TOI, Desai said, “He did the most intense sessions, day in and day out. He dragged me into the gym whenever he was free. He didn’t care about fatigue or workload programmes. All he said was he needed to keep working on himself. On the day of the final, he came to me with some kind of guilt in his mind and asked if he could take the day off. I said it was high time that he did,”
“Pant has so much in reserve that he will be fine for at least a year without having to do anything extraordinary. That’s why you see him moving around so well despite scoring two hundreds and keeping wickets for so long in the Headingley Test,” he added.
