50 OUTLOOK 8 July 2019
F1 BAT SPEED
to exceptional bat speed. He picks the
line and length [of the ball] very early,”
explains the former Delhi captain.
Pant also has tremendous stamina, a
fact that is eclipsed by his destructive
exp loits with the bat. One match that
demonstrated this was Delhi’s Ranji
Trophy game against Maharashtra at the
Wankhede Stadium in October 2016.
After Maharashtra batted for the first two
days, and Pant kept wickets for 173 overs,
he returned with the bat to smash 308 (42
boundaries and nine sixes) in an almost
eight-hour rampage. The effort spoke
volumes about his fitness and mental
ability. “The mental frame of his batting
is something like that of a Viv Richards or
a Sehwag, or even Sandeep Patil or Kirti
Azad,” says Pillai without hesitation.W
HILE Pant makes rapid progress,
he misses the man who many
years ago got him to “promise”
to earn the India cap—father
Rajinder, a university-level opener-
wicket-keeper, who passed away in
April 2017. He had told Outlook a little
earlier he that since his own fat her
couldn’t “afford his cricket”—they were
five siblings—he lived his dream
through Rishabh. “I told ‘Munna’ after
a summer camp of Tarak sir that I want
him to represent India and that I would
give him whatever was required for that.He promised me: ‘Baba, I will do it.’
Then, we hugged each other,” an emo-
tional Rajinder had recalled.
Rajinder used innovative methods to
train Pant since he was five. “I used to
make him practice with a cork ball on the
cemented rooftop of our Roorkee home
where the ball came faster. There was no
turf pitch in the city. I used to tie a pillow
to his chest so that my little boy didn’t get
hurt while facing faster deliveries. But he
did sustain a fracture. It was meant to
take the fear [of facing fast bowling] out of
him. This was extra coaching, apart from
what he received in school,” he had said.
Pant’s mother Saroj, principal at a sch-
ool her husband started in 1992 in
Roorkee, made sacrifices to support him
too. She and little Rishabh would take
five-hour bus journeys from Roo rkee to
Delhi, starting at 3 am, on wee kends so
that the kid could attend the Sonnet
Club’s net practice sessions on Saturdays
and Sundays at Sri Venka tes wara College.
The two would embark on the returnjourney on Sunday evenings to reach
Roorkee by midnight. This punishing
routine went on for about a year, until
Pant was admitted to a school in Delhi.
Money was initially a constraint. “It
was tough to buy bats, pads for him
bec ause his bats would cost between
Rs.20,000 to Rs.30,000. Once, during an
under-19 tournament in Delhi, he broke
three bats in quick succession. In a
lighter vein, I said people buy jewellery
and here I am buying bats for you,”
Saroj, who still indulges her son’s love
for tandoori chicken and paneer par-
athe, says with a smile.
Things have changed for good for the
Pant family. Today, the star cricketer
has two top-of-the-line cars in his gar-
age. He tastefully renovated his home
in Roorkee with IPL money and started
a restaurant for his sister, an MBA and
a former junior national basketball
player, there. After the 2019 IPL, he
took his mother on a holiday to Dubai
for a well-earned rest. On his return, he
received the news of his selection as a
‘cover’ for the injured Dhawan, and pro-
mptly took another flight, to England.
“His feet are firmly on ground; he has no
bad habits. His only love is cars, but he
can indulge in it as it’s his money,” says
Sinha. Everyone waits for Pant to make
his World Cup debut. All of them expect
it to be a smashing one. OYoung Pant was coached
at home by his father, at
school and at Delhi’s
Sonnet Club, for which
he used to take long bus
journeys on weekends.BACKLIFT
Pant’s coach,
Dronacharya
awardee Tarak
Sinha, with
students at the
Sonnet ClubJITENDER GUPTA