Delhi Daredevils want to retain Rishabh Pant in IPL 2018

Delhi Daredevils team management is keen to have swashbuckling middle order batsman Rishabh Pant in the next season. The 19-year-old left-hander is terrific when he gets going. However, he was not consistent enough in his maiden IPL season.

But, he has justified his batting skills in his first IPL season. He has played a 43-ball 97 runs innings which led Daredevils to victory while chasing a 212 runs target. Pant’s overall tally in IPL 10 is 366 runs in 14 matches at an average of 26.14 with highest score 97

Daredevil’s management has a knack of releasing key players to their opponents as they let batsmen like David Warner, AB de Villiers, Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli go their current teams.

Pant, a top choice for DD in IPL 2018

Now, they want to keep their young players at their disposal for the next season. The reason behind this idea is former Indian skipper and India A and India U-19 team coach and Daredevils mentor Rahul Dravid who asked the management to keep Pant for next season. “The coaching panel has made it clear to the Delhi management that Pant should be the top choice for the team in future,” a  Daredevils source while taking to Times of India said after suffering a defeat in their last game to Royal Challengers Bangalore by 10 runs.

However, Daredevils will face a challenge as the IPL Governing Council (GC) told all teams that all players will be sent back to the auction next season which doesn’t allow any retention. It is certain that Delhi will embrace the IPL GC to consider their request to have “matching card’ to retain their player by paying their auction money to IPL GC.

This season, Daredevils have a very young batting line up. Batsmen like Sanju Samson, Shreyas Iyer have performed really well but they were inconsistent. “Rishabh played very well this year. He entered the tournament at a very a difficult time. He lost his father, but overcame that tragedy and did consistently well throughout the season. I am sure he will go on to become a very important player for India,” Daredevils’ mentor Dravid said.

Recently, Dravid said injuries to experienced batsmen Quinton de Kock and JP Duminy before the tournament affected the side’s chances in IPL 2017. Daredevils lost five out of six close matches because their batting line-up lacked experience.

– Written by Sudipta Biswas