With less than five months remaining for the T20 World Cup, every match will be played, every selection will be done and taken in context with the tournament. As far as India are concerned, things are still up in the air given a few of the first-choice players are injured, some of them have made a comeback to the T20Is after a long gap while there is uncertainty regarding a couple of them. One of them is Rishabh Pant, who is likely to make his comeback to competitive cricket with IPL 2024 but he anyway wasn’t a regular in the T20 team even before his accident.
Since he has been out of action for more than a year now, Team India have tried the likes of Ishan Kishan, Jitesh Sharma and Sanju Samson as wicketkeeper batter in T20Is with KL Rahul not being in the scheme of things for the shortest format after a poor T20 World Cup. Despite all of this, Indian great Sunil Gavaskar considers Rishabh Pant as a sure-shot entry, if he is fit and if not, then KL Rahul. Hence, either of Samson, Ishan or Jitesh wasn’t considered by the legendary Indian batter.
Speaking on Star Sports, Gavaskar said, “I see him (Rahul) as a wicketkeeper as well but I will say one thing before that – if Rishabh Pant is fit on even one leg, he should come in the team because he is a game-changer in every format. If I am the selector, I will put his name first. However, if Rishabh Pant is unavailable and KL Rahul keeps wickets, it will be good because the balance will also get created. Then you have the option to play him as an opener or use him in the middle order as a finisher at No. 5 or No. 6.
“He is an all-rounder and he has improved his wicketkeeping so much. When he used to keep earlier, he was probably a slightly reluctant wicketkeeper, a keeper you could just manage with, but now he is a proper wicketkeeper,” he further said.
With Rahul not getting selected in the Afghanistan series, the pressure has increased on the senior wicketkeeper batter to showcase his skills in T20s in the middle-order and IPL will be make or break as far as his T20I career is concerned. For all the others (Samson and Jitesh in particular), the series against Afghanistan and then the IPL will be key to their chances.