Rishabh Pant’s innings reminded me of Brendon McCullum in IPL 2008: Sourav Ganguly

Rishabh Pant’s brilliance shone bright on Thursday night and, in this age of instant gratification fuelled and nurtured by social media, his exclusion from the Indian cricket team got many fans hot under the collar. It took a Sourav Ganguly to give the episode a normal amount of perspective. Just as he did with the English proposal of 100-ball cricket.

About Pant first. “He will get there. At present, MS Dhoni is there. You can’t replace him. Then you have Dinesh Karthik who, I thought, deserves a chance especially after what he did against Sri Lanka (an 8-ball 29 in the final of the Nidahas Trophy last March)….,” said the former India captain here on Friday.

So Pant will have to wait his turn, said Ganguly. His 63-ball 128 though reminded Ganguly of Brendon McCullum’s 158 that set the IPL rolling in 2008. “I think he is a future but having said that consistency is important. It’s not just one-off. I was reading about Ishan Kishan where he got 21-ball 62 in Kolkata...but when you pick someone for the country, you look at consistency. How many times does he keep doing that,” he said.

In the evening, Ganguly was present at an event as East Zone mentor for an under-16 cricket tournament where 900 schools participated and where eight teams from four zones will play the final round in Mumbai.

READ | Rishabh Pant hits unbeaten 63-ball 128 for Delhi Daredevils vs Sunrisers Hyderabad

Asked about the proposal of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to have 100-ball innings --- each team will bat for 15 overs and a final 10-ball over --- in its new city-based competition meaning it would give cricket a format 20 balls shorter than a T20 innings, Ganguly said he would rather hedge his bets.

“You have got to be very careful that it should not be such that before a spectator comes and blinks and the thing is over. The spectator wants the fun and pressure to go on for a certain period of time and then find genuine talent and genuine winners…The shorter the format gets the difference between the very good and the ordinary becomes lesser. That’s why Test cricket is the biggest challenge in cricket still.”