Rishabh Pant deserves every opportunity: Farokh Engineer

India are scheduled to play three T20Is and as many ODIs against Aaron Finch’s Australia, starting Sunday, February 24. The selectors decided to drop Dinesh Karthik from the ODI squad and gave Rishabh Pant an opportunity. The decision came as a surprise to many bearing in mind the reliability of Karthik as a middle-order batsman and Pant’s poor run of form in the 50-overs format.

With the selection, former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar also believes that Karthik’s ODI career is all but over. In the meantime, Pant would also be looking to grab the chance with both hands and churn out some handy knocks ahead of the World Cup which is scheduled to start on May 30 in England and Wales. The Men in Blue are set to play their first match against South Africa at the Rose Bowl.

Pant could even play as a batsman

In the meantime, Farokh Engineer, another retired cricketer, mentioned that the 21-year-old from Uttrakhand should get every opportunity and rightly so. He also said that Pant could be used as a specialist batsman. Engineer also mentioned that India are lucky to have the services of MS Dhoni.

“He (Pant) is a youngster who deserves every opportunity, he has the potential… We are in a very fortunate position to have Dhoni. At that age, he is very fit and he should definitely be in the team, who knows, Pant could even play as a batsman. He finished second average in Australia,” Engineer was quoted as saying in The Telegraph.

Furthermore, Farookh hailed the Indian spin attack as the most potent in the world. “According to me, we got the best spin attack in the world…Bhuvneshwar is very good, Shami is very good….we bat right till number nine, we got such good all-rounders,” he added.

Pant made his ODI debut in the home series last year against the Windies, but hasn’t quite lived up to the expectations in the format. In three ODIs, the Young Turk has only scored 41 runs at an average of 20.50 with a top score of 24.

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