I began playing cricket because of my dad, says Rishabh Pant

Rishabh Pant played a quality innings against the Royal Challengers Bangalore on Saturday but could not see his team past the finish line. The 19-year-old batsman scored 57 runs from 36 balls and hit three boundaries and four biggies in his innings. But he had a tough task in hand in the final over of the game when Delhi required 19 runs to get off the mark in the 10^th season of the Indian Premier League.

Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Shane Watson gambled with Pawan Negi in the last over and Rishabh Pant would have backed himself to get his team over the finishing line. The brilliant innings came to an end in a sad way as the batsman departed ending his franchise’s hopes.

Rishabh suffered a personal setback ahead of the season as the young player lost his father Rajendra Pant who passed away in sleep due to a cardiac arrest. A person needs to be very strong to recover from such a big tragedy and it was because of his father that the Delhi batsman is what he is today.

Pant first came into the picture when he played some tremendous knocks in the ICC Under-19 world cup which helped India finish as the runner-up in the tournament. Earlier this year, Pant also got called up in the T20 side against England as he continued to excel in domestic cricket hitting some big numbers.  He made his Indian Premier League debut last year and showed a lot of promise and intent. After featuring for India in a T20 against England earlier this year Pant revealed in a video with the Quint that it was from coach Anil Kumble that he got to know he was making the debut.

Speaking of his father, Pant quoted the Quint “My father always thought that I will become a cricketer and that’s why he has given me opportunity. I started cricket because of him only.”

“I used to take bus in the morning 2 o’ clock from Roorkee to Delhi because practice starts at 8 o’ clock. Not only me, my mother also did a lot of hard work with me” the cricketer said after making his T20 debut against England in February 2017.