Rishabh Pant is just a bit of a one-trick pony: Dean Jones

India’s young wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant is having a tough time on the field as well as off it. He has failed to do well with both bat and wicketkeeping gloves in recent times and has thus faced criticism from all around. And as the youngster is desperately trying to turn things around, former Australia batsman Dean Jones has said that he needs to improve his off-side game.

Jones said that Pant is a one-trick pony and would have to enhance his armoury in order to do well. Pant is widely regarded as the successor of MS Dhoni but has not really managed to do justice to it. While he has done well in his short Test career so far, his performance in ODIs and T20Is has left a lot to be desired.

His knack of throwing away his wicket after getting starts has further made things tricky for him. Pant has not really managed to take his time and has instead lost his wickets while playing an ambitious shot more often than not. Consequently, the 22-year-old has received lots of flak lately from India’s coaching staff, pundits and the media.

“He’s still a young kid, still learning his craft, still doesn’t know what’s going on a little bit,” Jones was quoted as saying by Indian Express. “He needs to work more on his strokeplay through the offside. At the moment, he’s just a bit of a one-trick pony.”

“We know he’s got an off-side game, he’s just got to work more. It wouldn’t take long to change but he needs to be very specific in his training programme right now,” he added.

‘Learn from Quinton de Kock’ – Dean Jones

Jones further said that Rishabh Pant should learn from South Africa star Quinton de Kock who top-scored for them in the recent T20I series in India. Jones said that the Proteas star changed his game to meet the demands and asked Pant to do the same.

“Quinton de Kock changed his game, that was very evident in the last T20 series against India,” said Jones, who played 52 tests and 164 one-day internationals for Australia.

“Everyone thought he struggled to hit the ball between point and mid-off and they bowled there. But through lots of net practice and good technique work, he hit a lot of boundaries. And all of a sudden they couldn’t line him up properly because he had other options to score,” he added.

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