Rishabh Pant scored his fourth century fighting the lone battle for India on the third day of the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town. He surpasses MS Dhoni to achieve big milestone for India.
Rishabh Pant scored his fourth century fighting the lone battle for India on the third day of the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town. Pant played beautifully, taking 133 deliveries to reach his century, while wickets kept falling at the other end. He now has Test centuries in England, Australia and South Africa to his name.
Pant remained unbeaten on 100 as India were bowled out for 198 in their second innings. With this, Pant became the first Indian wicketkeeper to score a Test century in South Africa. Prior to him, the record for the highest individual score by an Indian wicketkeeper against the Proteas was held by MS Dhoni, who scored 90 runs in a Test match at Centurion during the 2010/11 tour.
Pant’s score is also the highest score by an Asian wicket-keeper batsman in South Africa. Apart from Dhoni’s innings, former Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara scored 89 runs in 2002/03, while Bangladesh’s Liton Das scored 70 runs at Bloemfontein in 2017/18.
It was an innings of great grit and determination from Pant. With India losing two wickets in the first three overs of the day, Pant came on board with Virat Kohli to ensure that the team did not face any more bumps along the way. Post-lunch, India suffered a collapse after losing a back-to-back five-wicket haul, but Pant held on.
Another feature of Pant’s innings is how selflessly he played for the team. After hitting a few sixes to enter the 90s, Pant made sure he took most of the strike, threatening South Africa’s pace trio of Kagiso Rabada, Marco Janssen and Lungi Ngidi to Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami and Jasprit Bumrah. keeping away. Made possible by taking a single off the last or last ball of the over.
But more importantly, Pant stayed there and took India’s lead past 200. When Jensen dismissed Shami for the 9th Indian wicket, it looked like the wait for Pant’s fourth century would be a long one, but the 23-year-old stuck to his strategy. Single down to fine leg to reach three-figure mark. The entire change room applauded the effort, and perhaps the only shame was that there were no crowds to watch this spectacular knockoff.