India in England, summer of 2021

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Ben Stokes retires from Odi Cricket

[PKBasu]

Rishabh Pant is constantly subjected to criticism and held to a uniquely high standard -- until he succeeds, massively. It happened with test cricket, but he repeatedly proved himself in that format, and now the critics have been silenced. Ironically, in international cricket he (like Viru) is most successful in the longest format (as a batsman) and least so in the shortest format (although he is reasonably successful in non-international T20s such as the IPL). After tests, it was logical that he would succeed next in ODIs -- and that century in Manchester was one of the best-constructed ODI hundreds one will ever see. He was cautious, even slow in the early stages, playing second fiddle to Hardik Pandya was there. Once the latter was out, Pant opened up, took the bull by the horns, and swept India to victory.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

India won both T20I & Odi series, but there is huge concern of Indian top order facing left arm pacers.

Nasser Hussain had a take on it
https://www.crictracker.com/history-tel ... rder-woes/

But this issue is of high concern, its all started in 2015 Asia Cup in Bangladesh where Pakistsn's M Amir was first to find the weakness, later it was worstly exposed by Amir again in 2017 CT final, Boult, Starc, Shaheen, Sam Curran, Marco Jansen and latest by Reece Topley

[prasen9]

Rishabh Pant is constantly subjected to criticism and held to a uniquely high standard -- until he succeeds, massively.

Not really. All we are asking him is to perform at a top-level in ODIs and T20Is. His current record is borderline in ODIs even after this inning and pretty bad in T20Is. For ODIs, the comparison is not to the keepers who are worse but to the batsmen because we think that Rahul is an adequate keeper for ODIs. Dhawan, Rohit, Kohli, SAY, Shreyas, and Hooda all average higher than him. Shreyas has to sit out because Rahul is hurt. Once Rahul is back, I'd prefer Dhawan, Rohit, Kohli, Rahul, SAY, Shreyas, Hardik simply because Shreyas has performed better than Pant. Now this is, of course, a judgement call. Shreyas scores 41 at a SR of 96. Pant scores 36.5 at 109. Obviously, Pant saves us a bunch of balls but I'd take the five runs extra because we, unfortunately, play with 3-4 #11s these days at the bowling end. That puts pressure on the Pants and Jadejas of the world to score more and if we cannot get our tail to beef up, we need to bat solid until #7 or #8 so as not to need the tail, which in turn means that the weaker bats such as Pant and Jadeja should be asked to sit out. Well, at least Pant bats fast in ODIs (but fails to do so in T20Is). Jadeja is very slow in ODIs at a SR of 87. He'd be fabulous to have at #8 but neither Pant nor Jadeja should be in our top-7 when Rahul is back assuming no injuries. Now that Rahul is hurt, Pant is obviously better than the rest and deserves his chance in the 11 and he should be in the XV for the world cup for the ODI team.

For T20Is, if you look at it, Karthik and Kishan are being held to a uniquely high standard that is not being used for Pant. The selectors have used a very low standard for Pant. Maybe he will eventually pay us back in T20Is, but currently he has been rather bad in that format.

It happened with test cricket,

When? He has always been supported as the better bat in tests. Nobody argued that vis-a-vis Saha. What we argued was his poor keeping against spinners and he has improved wrt that.