Can a move to opening during LSG stint revive Pant's T20I career?

New Delhi [India], March 17 (ANI): Star Indian wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant will be kickstarting a new phase of his Indian Premier League (IPL) career as he captains a whole new team, Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in the upcoming season, with the pressure of being the most expensive player at Rs 27 crore looming large on his head.
Pant has represented Delhi Capitals (DC) for his entire IPL career since 2016, scoring 3,284 runs in 110 matches at an average of 35.31, with a century and 18 fifties. He was appointed as the team's captain in 2021 and led them to playoffs in the same season. He was let go by the franchise in 2024 ahead of the mega auction and became the league's most expensive player ever at Rs 27 crore, bought by LSG, who later appointed him as a captain too.
This new era could help him revive his T20I career with India, having last played the format in July last year. For someone who rose to fame with his wide range of unorthodox and audacious strokes and explosive knocks in the ICC Under-19 World Cup 2016 and the IPL 2017 and 2018, Pant has not been able to perform as per the gigantic expectations and hype in T20Is, scoring at an average of 23, striking well below 130 and having just three fifties after 75 matches, sitting out of the Indian side with Sanju Samson being the first-choice wicketkeeper-batter in the shortest format. With many promising youngsters emerging in Team India which has mastered the T20 art as of late, Pant has a lot to do within less time to re-establish himself in T20I set-up.
The biggest decision that could help him with this is: Where Pant play for LSG? A team that is blessed with a power-packed batch of overseas batters, Aiden Markram, Mitchell Marsh, Nicholas Pooran, and David Miller. Adding Pant and Ayush Badoni to this, LSG's top six looks absolutely on-point. But the issue is, none of them is a specialist opener.
Among the six, Pooran (94 innings) and Marsh (85 innings) have had batted in the top three the most, with Markram (39 innings) and Pant (21) have opened the batting on most occasions,with others opening in the only single-digit worth of matches. Markram has opened only once in last four years while Pant has opened only five times in last six years, as per Wisden.
Two potential best openers and the best middle-order from three-to-six has to be picked up from these world-class batters.
It would be tempting for LSG to rotate Pant, Pooran, Miller and Badoni between three-six spots, but having three back-to-back openers and the consequent one-dimensional thinking is something no team would like in these unpredictable days of T20 cricket, where right-left combinations are gaining popularity.
Pooran has established himself as one of the most destructive middle-order batters in T20 cricket no one has scored runs at a higher strike rate of 175.98 than him since IPL 2023, not even equally celebrated stars like Suryakumar Yadav and Heinrich Klaasen. Miller's dependency as a finisher is at an all-time high, which takes these two out of the discussion for opening and places them at numbers four-five or five-six or four-six, with Badoni to break the left-handed pattern.
Among the other three, Markram and Mitchell Marsh, Pant has the best numbers as an opener in T20s. While Pant averages 32.2 and strikes at 162.2 as an opener, Markram averages 27.9 and strikes at 128.9, while Marsh averages 18.8 and strikes at 147.1.
While Pant has opened only on 21 occasions in his career, his average is almost the same to 33 at number three and four and 31 at number five. Also, his strike rate at the opening is much higher than numbers three to five (149, 143 and 141 respectively).
As an opener, Pant has hit a boundary every 3.9 balls, which increases to 4.7, 5.2, and 5.6 balls at number three, four and five.
Also, the last time India tried Pant as a T20I opener was in 2022 and the returns were mixed with scores of 26, 1, 27, 6, 11. But every time he scored above 10 or even 20, his strike rate was above 170. His batting average as an opener for India is 14.20 and his strike rate is 136.50, way higher than his career SR of over 127.
After 2022, he did not open in any level of T20 cricket, but played at number three in the T20 World Cup, to capitalise on field restrictions during the powerplay and add a left-handed at the top three. He could do the same for LSG. He performed his job well in T20 WC, scoring 171 runs in eight innings, striking at 127.61 in a highly bowling-friendly tournament. The opening would also be in sync with Pant's aggressive playing style, which could yield him more runs when fielding restrictions are in place.
In the IPL, he has batted at number three in 13 innings, scoring 433 runs at an average of 39.36 and striking at above 169.
LSG could have either Marsh or Markram open alongside him, with Markram a better spin basher and Marsh offering more brutality and power.
Pant is open to opening as well, but there is no role clarity yet. In January after his appointment as LSG captain, Pant said as quoted by Wisden, "Obviously, there is a temptation to go that way [open the innings] but there is no 100 per cent clarity that should I open or stay in the middle order."
"Because when you have played in the middle order for so many years and have done well, God has been kind, so you get used to it. So I do not want to make rash decisions like 'let us do it because the external noise is suggesting this," he added.
"For me, this is my life, it is my career and this is something I live for and I do not want to change that overnight. I want to think over it a bit more, discuss it further with Zak bhai [Zaheer Khan, LSG mentor] and Justin [Langer, LSG head coach] about what we can do and eventually, we will back whatever decision we take," he concluded. (ANI)