You deserved better, Rishabh Pant

Cricket

If Test cricket is high literature, then T20 cricket must be commercial fiction; but even within the shortest form, if T20Is fall in the Archer / Grisham territory, the Indian Premier League (IPL) is in the Chetan Bhagat / Amish vortex. Any serious cricket fan must have a bit of an uneasy relationship with their preferred franchise league. Enjoying the IPL demands a suspension of disbelief, much like ‘mass’ movies (the term emanating from the South, but the trend picking up pace, albeit with limited success, in the Hindi film industry) do. But mass movies are, at the end of the day, as fictional as their hero’s ability to fend off a sea of vagabond attackers. They do not have, nor do they claim, a firm rooting in reality.

Cricket, however, is real: as real as Rishabh Pant’s dismembered body from that near-fatal road accident 457 days ago. In the lead-up to this year’s IPL, several commentators on the game remarked, without exaggeration – a rarity in today’s pedestrian commentary – that it is no less than a miracle to see Rishabh Pant back on a competitive cricket field. One of only three infamous original teams never to win the league, the Delhi Capitals (DC) went a step ahead, sweetening his comeback by anointing him captain. What was no doubt a bracing vote of confidence seemed more like a tactical blunder after two listless outings. Surely, for a young man freshly returned from the jaws of death (again, no exaggeration), the more astute approach would have been to let him focus on batting alone?

Despite various heartwarming videos of him practicing, greeting other players et al, Rishabh looked distinctly rusty in his first two outings, reaching, with not a little desperation at times, for the verve and vigour that is so characteristic of his batting. Pant’s decent 18 and 28 notwithstanding, the losses in their two opening games exposed DC as an out-of-sync side with hardly any teeth. Relegation to one of the bottom three teams seemed inevitable (and even the stauncher DC supporters may agree that it still is). Nobody in their right mind would give DC a chance against an imperious Chennai Super Kings (CSK) side which seemed to have a never-ending assembly line of batters, and every crowd in every stadium in the league on its side, to boot.

And so, DC shaped up (wearily, one would imagine) against CSK last night at the temporary ‘home’ ground allotted to them at Visakhapatnam, the pitch at Delhi being rested after an intense run in the recently concluded Women’s Premier League. Only 790-odd km from Chennai (compared to an additional 1,000km for Delhi), the stadium was overrun by CSK’s yellow, with only a few subdued pockets of DC blue.

But, against the run of play, DC beat CSK by 20 runs and won their first points of IPL 2024.

Now, this piece is not about how DC played a near-perfect game to outscore, outwit, and smother the menacing (not to mention unbeaten) CSK machinery who were unsurprisingly the overwhelming favourites to win this encounter, having come out on top in the last 4 matches between them. It is also not about the prospects of DC or CSK in the league, because cricketing logic (as much as the IPL allows for, in any case) dictates that CSK will ensure the resumption of normal service next match on, while DC will continue to bumble through the tournament in their topsy-turvy way and likely retain their place in the IPL’s holy trinity. It is also not about MS Dhoni or his continued presence at the tournament, which is ultimately his business (and CSK’s) – even Gautam Gambhir would have to agree that Dhoni is well within his rights to ply his trade in the circus of the IPL.

This is, however, about the commentary and reportage around last night’s match ensuring that its enduring image will be not of the victorious wicketkeeper-batter-captain who, having beaten death on the way back to the inferno of competitive cricket, willed himself on from 18 to 28 to a stylish, match-winning 51, and goaded a floundering side to execute their plans with such pin-point perfection that they had the Goliath-like CSK thoroughly beaten even before the last over began; but of roaring fans dressed or painted in yellow, celebrating more wildly than if they had won the title, chanting in a mad fervour the name of the other wicketkeeper-batter playing in the match.

This piece is not about MS Dhoni, but will necessarily need to refer to him in the limited context of yesterday’s match, and to his (and/or CSK’s) extraordinary fandom – with which, I must concede, he has little to do other than playing the sport he loves to the best of his abilities and in the best interests of his team.

The reactions of the in-stadium fans at Vizag yesterday were such that even until the end of the presentation ceremony, the atmosphere was very much one of a CSK win. They, I suppose, may be forgiven. Deification of cricketers is the oxygen that fans the fire of cricket in India, and one must live with the fact that it probably always will. But for the analysts of the game – the commentators and the media – to become so intoxicated by Dhoni’s knock as to relegate Rishabh Pant’s near-unbelievable comeback to the backburner, is unforgivable. Having followed snippets of the reportage since last night after having watched the match ball-by-ball, I am only surprised that someone hasn’t shoved aside Dinesh Karthik’s newly-minted claim to a spot in India’s T20 World Cup squad in favour of the long-haired 42-year old strawberry farmer from Ranchi.

Let’s face some facts. Dhoni made 37 off 16. The stroke-making en route was impressive; some of the boundaries, scintillating. But there’s not much more to it from a cricketing point of view. 20 of his 37 runs came in the final over, by which time CSK had comprehensively lost the match. Short of making 36, which he neither did nor threatened to do, any or all runs made by him in that over were, in the context of the match, quite simply, irrelevant. Even 36, if made, would have been only academic. In the tense penultimate over bowled by Mukesh Kumar with nerves of steel, when the batters could yet have influenced the outcome of the match, Dhoni made only 1 run off 4 deliveries faced. No doubt, his knock was enjoyable and he gave the people what they wanted – but then, from their showing yesterday, it seems that the CSK fandom is content with a repeat of last night in each of their remaining matches: CSK loses, but Mahendra Viktor Singh Dhoni Krum gets the Snitch (or 37 off 16 with 3 sixes and 4 fours). Even the otherwise sensible-looking Ruturaj Gaikwad seemed to have gotten swept up in the madness, saying coolly that to be on the losing side ‘just’ by a margin of 20 runs constituted a close game for CSK; this, in a format where even a 3-run/2-wicket victory needs to jostle for space with games which are even closer (not even counting ties).

Where we collectively let Rishabh Pant down was allowing the ‘MSD Magic’ narrative to fully wrest the sheen away from a hard-fought victory, personally for him and collectively for a much-maligned franchise. His knock of 51 was scratchy to start – much like the two prior innings – but clinical towards the end, his disdainful hits against the then-man of the hour, Matheesha Pathirana, showing promising glimpses of his return to fearsome form. Coming at a strike rate eventually better than that of the other half-centurion, David Warner, it would not be wrong to say that the last 20-odd runs scored by Pant was the difference between the two sides.

There had to have been a way – both for the crowd and for the commentators – to cheer for Dhoni’s belated magic while stoutly acknowledging the better team and the better wicketkeeper-batter on the day. Any cricketer who goes through what Rishabh has deserves as much; but Rishabh deserves that and much more. We cannot forget that Pant has single-handedly won matches for India in a way that no wicketkeeper-batter has; he has (I am sure) given older, wiser, and craftier bowlers sleepless nights; he has staked his very life on coming back to a game in which he no longer has the certain future he once did. At this delicate juncture in his career, Pant perhaps needs the public adulation which Dhoni – even though he may not be playing to garner it – so routinely receives, in a way that Dhoni does not (and perhaps never did). He is a current cricketer who may yet win world titles for India: it is in the common interest (for Indians, at least) to give him a shot in the arm merely for his courage and even for average efforts; but yesterday, however well anyone else did (initials MSD or not), Rishabh Pant delivered a match-winning performance, plain and simple. For that, he deserved much more than the muted acknowledgement he has ended up with.

In the two post-matchers prior to yesterday, Pant looked distinctly uneasy. Gone was the cheeky grin, the carefree manner and the occasional tongue-in-cheek quip. He looked grim and guarded, the successive losses doing nothing to relax his demeanour. One would imagine that yesterday, big win done and dusted, the tension would give way to dazzling smiles. But the grim, unsmiling visage was firmly in place on a face that best wore a rounder look and yellow sunglasses. Throughout his interview by Harsha Bhogle, he kept his answers limited and displayed no flair: whether this was a natural consequence of the reflection that must have followed his recent pain, or a reaction to being unfairly (and shall we say, unwittingly) overshadowed by a senior colleague at ‘home’, one cannot say with certainty. Bhogle, to his credit, coaxed a hint of a grin out of Pant by referring to a one-handed six he’d hit, a shot that Pant has made his own over the years like no other. It is too bad that today’s papers cannot stop gushing about the other ’keeper’s one-handed six that was ultimately of no consequence in a match that held boundless meaning for the young man from Roorkee. We can only be thankful that at least one section of fans in the stands held up a poster that addressed Rishabh Pant directly: You Will Never Walk Alone. Even in a packed stadium that can barely spare a thought for your resilience, Rishabh, you’ll never walk alone.