Melbourne: While praising Rishabh Pant’s previous successes due to his high-risk style of playing the game, Indian captain Rohit Sharma stated the wicketkeeper-batter needs to figure out the right way of doing things for himself and the team.

Rohit’s comments come after Pant had two horrid dismissals in the 184-run loss to Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. In the first innings, Pant played a scoop shot to third man and fell for 28 off 37 balls, which brought him severe criticism from legendary Sunil Gavaskar.

On day five’s play, Pant mistimed a pull shot to deep mid-wicket off Travis Head after showing remarkable restraint and walked back for 30 off 104 balls. His dismissal sparked a collapse for India, as they were bowled out for 155 in a chase of 340.

“There hasn’t been any discussion about today. We are all disappointed. But again, look, Rishabh Pant needs to understand what is required from himself more than any one of us telling him. It’s about him understanding and figuring out what is the right way to go about it. In the past, he’s given us a lot of success doing what he does. So as a captain, there is a kind of mixed reaction to that.

“Sometimes you want to back that thought of him playing the way he plays; sometimes, when things don’t look good, it frustrates everyone. That is what it is, that’s the reality. It’s the success and failure that need to be balanced about it. As captain, it’s hard to have a conversation when it has given him a lot of success as well.

“But it’s about him figuring out what is the right way to do things, it’s about situations as well. In certain situations of the game, if there’s a risk percentage, do you want to take that risk? Do you want to let the opposition come back into the game? Those are the things he need to figure out himself,” said Rohit in the post-match press conference.

With Pant not being in the best of his run-making self in the series so far, Rohit added, “I’ve known Rishabh for a long time and understand his cricket as well… In terms of conversations, no way I can say I’ve not had a chat with him or he doesn’t understand what the team expects. He understands that. But things that he does give him results as well, just the fine line between telling him not to do those things or telling him to do those things.”

India’s make-up of the playing eleven raised eyebrows, as Shubman Gill was left out for Washington Sundar. With Gill being out, Rohit moved to his usual opening position and KL Rahul slotted to number three. Rohit said the rationale for leaving out Gill was to have more bowling options in the playing eleven while retaining some batting depth.

“I had a chat with him (Gill), there’s no way when you’re leaving someone out, for whatever reason it is, you will not have a chat. The chat with him was clear; he was not dropped. Just wanted to have extra bit of cushion in the bowling and we opted for an allrounder, which shouldn’t weaken our batting line-up.”

“Comprising a batter for a bowler is not something I wanted to do. We wanted to bat as deep as possible, along with that have a bowling attack which could take 20 wickets. We considered everything, and we ended up compromising him, unfortunately.

“With him, there was never a doubt that he wasn’t batting well or he was not scoring runs, or anything like that. Just to get that combination where we can cover both bases – batting and bowling, we opted for that,” he concluded.

IANS