Former India captain Sourav Ganguly was left awestruck by Rishabh Pant’s blisterring knock of 128 runs against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Thursday and said that Pant will get to play for the national team in due time.
Related| India are good enough to beat Afghanistan without the services of Virat Kohli: Ganguly
“For Rishabh it will happen, he will get there… I think he is the future,” Ganguly said at a promotional event.
“For the likes of Pant, Ishan Kishan time will come. They are young there’s no hurry. They will get matured as they play more games with time. They will play for India in the years to come.
“But having said that consistency is important, hope it’s not just one off. I was reading about Ishan Kishan after that knock in Kolkata… When you pick someone for the country, you look at consistency — how many times does he keep doing that. Yes, T20 is different, opportunities are a lot lesser.”
You may like| Indian team has the potential to win a day/night Test: Sourav Ganguly
Pant was ignored for India’s ODI and T20 team for England tour on which Ganguly defended the selectors decision and said “At the present moment MS Dhoni is there. You can’t replace MS at the moment, then you have Dinesh Karthik who also deserves a chance in the national side, especially after what he did in Sri Lanka to win that game which was absolutely lost for India. Dinesh deserves more than anybody else because I think he is a very very good player.”
Pant’s knock reminded Ganguly of Brendon McCullum’s knock of 73-ball 158 against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the inaugural match of IPL at the M Chinnaswamy stadium on April 18, 2008.
“I saw McCullum knock from the other end in the first game of IPL. I was batting with him, but to see Rishabh Pant play the way he did yesterday was phenomenal.”
“Delhi were struggling having lost a few wickets, he was involved in a couple of runouts and to come out and play like that for a young player was remarkable,” he said.
