CHENNAI: Rishabh Pant has been under the scanner ever since he stepped into the shoes of M.S. Dhoni. But the young wicket-keeper batsman said he was never worried about the constant criticism.
“I will always tell a person that you have to believe in yourself. It doesn’t matter what people say around you. Sometimes you don’t get runs, sometimes you get runs but the process is always important,” said Pant.
Pant scored his maiden ODI half-century, against West Indies on Sunday, and his knock guided India to a competitive total after the top-order collapse.
Pant said it’s been a big learning curve. “From the team’s point of view, whatever I can do to help my team win, to have a good score on the scoreboard, that’s what I was focussing on. In the end, I got some runs,” he said.
“I’ve realised after playing a fair bit at the international level that unlike at amateur levels of cricket, there isn’t anything like a natural game. At the international level, you have to play according to the situation or what the team demands. As an individual and as a player, I want to focus on my processes. All the talk going around, they’re good and sometimes they’re not. At the moment, I’m concentrating on my game ,” said Pant.
Pant and Shreyas Iyer put on 114 runs for the fourth wicket. “At the start, Shreyas and I were thinking of first stitching together a partnership and taking the game to the 35th-40th over because a 50-over game is a fairly long one,” Pant said.
