Greg Chappell, the former Australia captain and India’s former men’s cricket head coach, is thrilled with Rishabh Pant’s batting, despite possessing a technique that’s not in ‘the MCC coaching manual’.
“What an exciting cricketer! What a player to have on your team!,” Chappell said, while interacting via videoconferencing at the launch of str8bat, a smart bat sticker that acts as a performance analysis tool. “He reminded me very much of Adam Gilchrist. The difference that it can make to a team to have a wicketkeeper that can bat at that level and to score runs quickly.”
Besides surpassing Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s mark of six Test hundreds, the most by an Indian ’keeper, Pant became only the second wicketkeeper in Test history to score a hundred in each innings of a Test match during India’s series-opener in Leeds.
“The beauty of it is that Rishabh gets his runs at a very fast rate, which gives you time to win cricket matches. He was a phenomenal performer (at Headingley). Some of the shots that he played probably weren’t in the MCC coaching manual when I last looked at it,” Chappell said.
“He is reinventing the game as a batsman. The modern technology, the bats are very different, obviously. You can play shots that weren’t possible with the old bats. But, man, he is exciting to watch. You never quite know what to expect from him from the first ball.
“At any stage, he is likely to jump down the wicket to the fast bowlers or he will play the falling ramp shot. It keeps the opposition on their toes. He is a match-winner and very nearly made the difference in that regard.”
Former India wicketkeeper and chief selector Kiran More also attended the function. More and Chappell hoped that the technological innovation would get a go-ahead by the Marylebone Cricket Club – the custodians of the cricket laws – for the stickers to be used in competitive matches.