Follow UsRishabh Pant has been under the pump for some time now over his batting, especially in T20Is, but head coach Rahul Dravid has insisted that he remains an integral part of India's batting line-up in the months to come.
Pant, who led India in the five-match T20I series against South Africa at home, managed just 58 runs in five innings. Both sides shared the series after the decider in Bangalore was washed out on Sunday (June 19).
"Personally, he would have liked to score a few more runs but it is not concerning him. Certainly, he is a very big part of our plans going ahead in the next few months," Dravid said during the post-match press conference.
Dravid further added that he thought Pant had a good IPL in terms of strike-rate, but did not reflect well on his average. "I think he had a pretty good IPL in terms of strike-rate even though it might not have looked good on averages," the India head coach said.
Pant failed to get even a single score in excess of 50 in IPL 2022 but managed 340 runs at 30.90 at a strike-rate of 151.78.
"In IPL, he looked to move up a little bit (in terms of averages) and probably three years ago he was on those numbers. We are hoping that we can get those numbers from him at the international level."
Dravid understands Pant's high-risk game comes with a price.
"In the process (of playing an attacking game), he might go wrong in a few games but he remains an integral part of our batting line-up with the power he has and the fact that he is a left-hander is important to us in the middle overs, he played some good knocks," he said.
About his captaincy, Dravid felt that Pant did well considering that he led the side back in the series from 0-2 down.
"To bring a team back from 0-2 down and to level it at 2-2 and give us a chance to win was good. Captaincy is not about wins and losses only. He (Pant) is a young captain, growing as leader. It is too early to judge him and you don't want to do that after one series," Dravid was clear in his thought process.
"It was nice to see he has got opportunities to lead, keep and bat. He had a lot of load on him but gaining from that experience and credit to him for ensuring that we went from 0-2 down to 2-2," the coach was all praise for the stand-in skipper.
(With inputs from PTI)