Following KL Rahul was pulled out of the South Africa T20Is due to a groyne injury, wicket-keeper batsman Rishabh Pant was elevated to leadership for the series.
During his maiden news conference as India captain, the 24-year-old joked, “I will not be responsible for processing it yet. I only found out about a hour earlier.”
While Rahul’s injury is concerning, Pant is happy for the opportunity to lead India and believes he can live up to expectations.
“It’s a great feeling; it didn’t happen in ideal conditions, but I’m glad it happened. I’d like to appreciate the BCCI for giving me the opportunity to captain the Indian team “he remarked.
“I’ll do my best to make the most of it. Thank you to everyone who has supported me through the ups and downs of my cricketing career. I plan to use it as a foundation and continue to improve and make my life better every day.”
Whenever it concerns to captaining, Pant has been no rookie. The left-hander had captained the Delhi Capitals in the previous two Indian Premier League (IPL) games, as well as in the Ranji Trophy. Pant feels that his past encounters would be extremely beneficial in this current task.
“I believe (leading in the IPL) would assist me a lot as a leader since when you do the similar activity over and over, you develop.” “I am someone who learns from his errors, and I think this will assist me in the next days,” Pant added.
When asked if the batting order would alter in Rahul’s absence, Pant responded, “I don’t believe there would be much of a shift in the batting order because KL would have opened.” We don’t have very many openers; we’ll talk about it later.
“I believe that as a team, we have discussed certain objectives that we hope to attain as a group. Finally, we get the World Cup in the back of your minds and are ready for it. We will see differences in the way we play cricket in the days ahead.”
The five-match T20I series against South Africa gets underway on Thursday, June 9th, with the first encounter in Delhi.