24-07-2025
Hobbling Rishabh Pant showed that cricket is in dark ages on substitutes
A few Test batsmen have returned to the wicket when more badly injured than Pant but not many. He re-appeared on the second morning at Old Trafford at 314-6, marked his guard with his left foot, and added two runs off the eight balls he faced before lunch, both of them hobbled singles.
Australia's Rick McCosker batted with a broken jaw in the Centenary Test of 1976-7 against England at Melbourne. He would never have passed the concussion Test prescribed now after being hit on the head, helmetless as it was.
Lord Cowdrey, or Colin as he was in 1963, walked out to bat with a broken arm in the Lord's Test against West Indies, though he did not actually face a ball, while Malcolm Marshall, with a broken thumb, scored a boundary with one hand against England at Headingley in 1984. But nobody injured has resembled Pant, if only because nobody when fit has resembled Pant, the most maverick of Test cricketers to date.
Never mind that the injury was self-inflicted to all intents - any sensible person would not have tried to reverse-sweep Chris Woakes. Still, it was a valiant act when he hobbled out half-an-hour before lunch on day two, his right shoe bigger and more substantially padded than his left. Fainter hearts would not have fancied a bat against Ben Stokes operating at full throttle in grey light.
Pant had scored 37 off 48 balls before being carted off to hospital on the first evening, his right foot broken. Chivalrously - and there is a distinct chivalrous streak in Stokes - England's captain pitched the last three balls of his over fullish and widish. Pant had no runner of course: that gentleman's agreement was abused so often that runners are forbidden now in the professional sport.
Before the lunch interval, Pant managed to hobble a single when he forced a ball square off Stokes: it would have been two had he been able to run. He somehow pushed another single square of the wicket off Brydon Carse, taking him to 39, before reverting to type and trying his first yahoo.
What makes Pant attempt these shots, shots which normal batsmen never attempt in a Test match, even in this era of T20? He might get bored easily: a few dot balls and he indulges in something outrageous. Often a rationale lurks beneath the surface: it was predictable that Carse was going to bowl outside off stump, so a yahoo was a free hit, which Pant happened to miss. But the next ball from Carse was similar, if not identical, and Pant chose to let it pass through to the wicketkeeper.
The essential key to Pant being the inimitable Pant is that he is an all-rounder with the licence that his role involves. He can always do a good job for his side by keeping wicket, if he happens to get himself out to something wild - like the shot in the Test series in Australia last winter which had the watching Sunil Gavaskar shouting: 'Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!'
If anyone today comes close to Pant in the ambitiousness of his strokes, it has to be England's Harry Brook. Some of his shot-selection in the third Test at Lord's was Pant-ian, but it did not get him beyond 23. And for all his attempts at medium-pace, he is no all-rounder.
Joe Root has an imp on his shoulder, but he has kept it under control since being castigated for a reverse-sweep in India against, of all bowlers, Jasprit Bumrah. He only indulges his impulse now when England are in control of a game. And before helmets, nobody was insane enough to attempt such shots as Pant did on the opening day at Old Trafford when he swept Jofra Archer.
The right balance between risk and reward, in Pant's case, would probably have been if he had played normally against England's pace bowlers, including Woakes, and gone after the spinners Liam Dawson and Root.
Method does lie in Pant's apparent madness. If he is injured in the course of executing some of the most astonishing shots that Test cricket has ever seen - if he suffers an impact injury, that is - then he can be replaced when the time arrives for India to field. In this instance he handed over to Dhuv Jurel, by common consent the better wicketkeeper.
