Rishabh Pant hints at joining Chennai Super Kings through latest Instagram post

The chronic underperformers of the Indian Premier League, the Delhi Capitals (DC), recently let head coach, Ricky Ponting, off the roster. This has unsurprisingly caused a domino effect in terms of fans speculating another pivotal figure, skipper Rishabh Pant, to be offloaded from DC directory. The conjecturing have only magnified since Pant's most-recent Instagram post went viral moments after he posted it online.

The Indian wicketkeeper-batter shared a collage which had him and renowned actor Superstar Rajnikanth. Pant had dressed in a similar formal attire, with the most-striking common ground being the manner in which Pant sat, although with his right leg crossed over the left, as well as the caption Thalaiva (leader in Tamil).

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Thalaiva is a widely-established moniker which die-hard fans of Rajnikanth call him. In the same vein, fans of Pant are linking this to Dhoni, the ex-skipper of Chennai Super Kings (CSK), who’s been lovingly called Thala (synonymous to Thalaiva) by CSK supporters.

Social media went ablaze with the post gaining a lot of traction among social media users, of which most are speculating the Haridwar-born to be a like-for-like replacement for Dhoni who might call it a day as far as playing in the IPL is concerned. 

There have also been reports floating around with Director of Cricket of DC, Sourav Ganguly, being more than hung up on retaining Pant as the franchise's skipper, despite the consensus in the higher management of the team being otherwise.

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Pant's best season for DC came in 2018, where he scored 684 runs in 14 games. However, he hasn't been able to match up to that tally ever since, with the closest he came being the following season with the southpaw scoring 488 runs, despite featuring in two additional games.