Rishabh Pant does a thankless job, says Sunil Gavaskar

At a time when almost everything is going wrong for young Rishabh Pant, he has received some much-needed support from the legendary Sunil Gavaskar. The former India skipper, on Sunday, leaped to the defense of Pant, saying the wicketkeeper-batsman has a thankless job to do and needs to be given enough chances to prove himself.

Pant’s performance in the just-concluded T20I series against Bangladesh has further piled up pressure on him. He has been under the scanner for quite some time now and the displays against Bangladesh have only hurt his cause. Pant’s struggles with the bat as well as wicketkeeping gloves continued in the series.

In two outings, he failed with the bat, scoring just 27 and 6. What made things worse for him was his wicketkeeping. In the second T20I, he botched up a stumping and made numerous blunders with the Decision Review System (DRS) calls. And with every failure from Pant, the critics are coming out in large numbers to slam.

Gavaskar defends Rishabh Pant

Sunil Gavaskar, however, spared a thought for Rishabh Pant, saying that the youngster does a thankless job. The ex-cricketer said that wicketkeeping is one of the few thankless jobs in the game before insisting that Pant is ‘keeping well’.

“There are two-three thankless jobs in this game. One is the umpires’ job. If he gets nine decisions right but one decision wrong, the wrong one gets talked about. Same thing with the wicket-keepers, they can do 95 percent of the things right but the one miss is talked about,” Gavaskar was quoted as saying by Indian Express.

“Same thing is happening at the moment with Rishabh. His lapses are talked about more when otherwise he is keeping well,” he added.

Before Gavaskar, India’s stand-in captain Rohit Sharma had also defended Pant. The India star asked Pant’s critics to leave him alone for a while and let him play with freedom. Meanwhile, along with Pant, senior opener Shikhar Dhawan is also facing the heat for his poor displays with the bat. When asked about Dhawan, Gavaskar said that players are bound to feel pressure due to intense competition.

“There is pressure on everybody. Everybody needs to be given enough chances. That is for the selectors to decide, the adequate number of chances. There will be opportunities to try out players in the West Indies series (next month). There are enough opportunities for selectors to mix it up and see (what is working),” said Gavaskar.

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