For Rohit And Pant It’s Do-or-Die In Red And White

There are striking similarities between Rohit and Pant’s predicament; the Indian team is eager and impatient for them to succeed at a slot they want them to. Not at a slot which is more natural for them.

This week Indian cricket is looking anxiously at two people. Rishabh Pant for not performing upto potential in white-ball cricket; and secondly, there are apprehensions about Rohit Sharma showing up nicely in red-ball Test cricket. There are lot of striking similarities between the two though; that entire cricket fan fraternity, team management, administrative set-up are eager and impatient for them to succeed at a slot they want them to --- Pant at No.4 and Rohit at the top. Not at a slot which is more natural for them. Or to put it more specifically, these are slots that has perennially been India's Achilles Heel -- Number 4 in ODIs and Opener in Test match cricket. If Pant and Rohit succeed, it will be a masterstroke of the team management and the selection committee, but failure is only and only their inability of showing the right technique against the red moving ball and slow turning white kookaburra. To every former Test cricketer who sees a Virender Sehwag for Rohit Sharma, they conveniently forget that there's a Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar as well. Someone who have had great phenomenal success as white ball opener but never ventured into replicate that into red ball cricket. Rohit may have taken the bait since India is still searching for an opener and better than serving drinks but a failure at the top, if that happens, should only fairly bring him back into reckoning in the middle order. Like England did in the Ashes with Jason Roy. They put him into middle-order before discarding him. Indian team should give Rohit the same 'comfort', like they gave to their own Hanuma Vihari when he was a stop-gap at the top. Only that Rohit's success in white-ball doesn't allow him to be seen as a stop-gap or as an experiment. His age, experience makes it a make-or-break case for him. Because boy wonder Prithvi Shaw may comeback after ban or another wonderful boy Shubman Gill shifted gears early to be 'considered' an opener. On the other hand, Rishabh Pant has age on his side and fewer competitors. But his inability to show an adjusted technique in rotating the strike is also fast translating to Test cricket -- where former cricketers are talking about Wriddhiman Saha again. Here are the stats for that. Pant has 2 Test hundreds and 2 fifties in 11 Tests at an average of 47. Saha has 3 hundreds and 5 fifties in 32 Tests at an average of 30. Quite ironically, the early talk of Pant in Test cricket was about his wicketkeeping skills against Saha but now it's only about his batting failures. And that too in limited overs. Pant's keeping has gone up in standards and that should keep Saha out. Or maybe not. Because now even the team management is looking at white ball form to talk about red ball cricket. Good luck Rohit-Rishabh. Because in them lies a bigger case for Indian cricket.