Is Pant trying too hard to be Dhoni?

Chennai: The wait kept getting longer and longer, till it was 19.4 overs. With one ball to go for the Lucknow Super Giants innings to fold on Tuesday, skipper Rishabh Pant walked in and failed to connect any of the two deliveries he faced, leaving his team in doldrums.

The game against Delhi Capitals wasn’t a case in isolation. The mercurial Pant acquired for an alltime high Rs 27-cr to be skipper of LSG has been a shadow of his once destructive self. After nine games this season, he has aggregated a paltry 106 runs, 63 of which came in one game (against CSK).

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The strike rate, too, is 96.36, which is ridiculously low by his standards. For one, Pant hasn’t given himself the time to settle down in one slot, going up and down the order. It hasn’t allowed him his own mental freedom, so central to his game.

His former India colleague Cheteshwar Pujara put the the lefthander travails in perspective. “Pant is trying too hard to be MS Dhoni , which he is not,” Pujara said in a post-match show, a point that former India wicketkeeper batsman Deep Dasgupta too agrees with. “As much as Rishabh tries to be Dhoni, he is fundamentally different to MSD.

Dhoni was a player who used his head brilliantly to overcome the inadequacies in his game and become the player that he was. Pant, on the other hand, has a lot of heart and less head. His natural talent is greater, and it is important that he doesn’t bind himself overthinking his game,” Dasgupta, commentating on the IPL, told TOI.

LSG, of course, is a demanding franchise which is desperate for silverware and franchise pressure took its toll on KL Rahul last year. But one understands that owner Sanjiv Goenka hasn’t been interfering at all this time around, letting Pant and the technical team do their job.

What could really be hurting Pant then is the self-imposed clutter in his mind. He has already lost his place in the Indian white-ball set-up with Rahul and Sanju Samson taking leads, and the 27-year-old might just be feeling the heat. “It seems he is muddled in his mind. It is true that he is fighting for his place in the Indian white-ball side and that is probably affecting his thought process,” Dasgupta said.

He said that Pant comfortably puts on his captain’s hat when fielding but needs to be “the free soul” that he has always been when batting. “Injury notwithstanding, Pant’s decision to hold himself back on Tuesday is baffling,” added Dasgupta, “If he thinks that Abdul Samad is better suited to give the innings the necessary push, then he is probably underselling himself.

” With five wins in nine, LSG are very much still in the reckoning for a top-four berth, and that is a sliver of hope for skipper and franchise. But with Nicholas Pooran ’s form slightly dipping at a crucial stage, it is important that Pant pulls himself out of this recent white-ball mess of his own making.

Poor form is a dangerous thing, and it can easily permeate into his red-ball game as well. With India embarking on a crucial five-Test series to England just after the IPL, every Indian cricket follower will hope that Pant rediscovers his touch by the end of May.