Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting compared Team India’s young wicket-keeper batsman Rishabh Pant with the legendary Aussie keeper-batsman Adam Gilchrist.
The Delhi keeper also won the ICC Men’s Emerging Player Award at the ICC Awards on Tuesday. Pant was also named in ICC’s Test team of the year. Other than Pant, star Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah and skipper Virat Kohli are the only Indians to be named in this team.
Heaping praises on Pant, Poting also said that the southpaw would also surpass former India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s tally of six Test tons. Pant has already scored two overseas Test centuries – in England and Australia.
“He is a real talent and an incredibly good ball striker. He has got a really good game sense as well. He is someone who could play a lot of Test cricket for India across formats. He has got to do a bit of work on his keeping and he will also become a better batsman,” Ricky Ponting was quoted as saying by the ICC website.
Ponting further said, “We talk about MS Dhoni all the time and his impact on Indian cricket. He played a lot of Tests for India but made only six Test hundreds.”
“This kid will make a lot more Test hundreds than that. We talk about him in the commentary box and he is sort of like another Adam Gilchrist,” The Australian added.
Gilchrist also lauded Pant saying that he is one player he would “happily pay to watch”.
“He’s a cricketer that is at the start of his journey so he’ll learn these particular parts of the game and he’ll learn that there’s always more time than what you think, but he’s got a great foundation to be a successful Test cricketer.”
“He’s a cricketer that I would happily pay to watch,” he said.