Watching a naturally attacking batter like Rishabh Pant flounder and find himself completely at sea in IPL 2025, one gets the distinct impression that he has just bitten off way more than he can chew.
Imagine being made captain of a franchise that has just bought you at a mega auction, being paid the highest ever auction price that any player has ever got in the history of the league. And, oh yes – you are also the wicket-keeper and a key batter, expected to play your aggressive brand of cricket, every time you step onto a cricket field with a bat in hand. And also, you play for a franchise whose owner is known to come down to the playing field to have a tough conversation with the team captain if he is not happy.
Pressure Cooker Situation
It would perhaps be an understatement to say that Rishabh Pant has been under quite a bit of pressure from the time he joined the Lucknow Super Giants. And that is maybe what we are seeing, almost every time he bats this season – him crumbling under crippling pressure. So much so that IPL 2025 could well end up being his worst-ever season with the bat since he joined the league in 2016.
Historically, his worst completed season so far in the IPL was his debut, when he scored 198 runs in 10 matches. Till the LSG vs GT match on May 22, Pant had scored 135 runs in 12 games, at an average of under 13, with one fifty-plus score. He has had no fixed batting position, and it's almost crystal clear that he is keeping his captain's hat on almost all the time, which is affecting his batting. Every batter goes through lean patches, but these numbers and tactics are symptomatic of so much more. They are signs that there is just too much going on in Pant's head. And with everything that he has been given charge of, plus the inevitable expectations that come with a staggering price tag of Rs 27 crore, can you really blame him?
Leadership Is Taxing
Leading a team is never easy, but some have an innate knack for leadership. For them, captaincy is not a burden; if anything, it makes their game stronger. Names like Shreyas Iyer and Shubman Gill come to mind. For Pant, though, leading a team that has an overall balanced line-up, at least on paper, and one that is expected to do well, seems to be a responsibility that is getting in the way of his primary skill: batting.
Let's face it, no athlete can be completely free of mental pressure. Every single captain in the IPL - just like in international cricket - has to deal with pressure. But every captain deals with it in his or her own way. If Virender Sehwag didn't have a ‘see the ball, hit the ball' approach, maybe he wouldn't have become the legendary player he became.
A Faltering Bat
Pant is in a very similar mould. He, too, likes to have an uncluttered mind while batting. There are plenty of stories about how coaches have realised that they shouldn't try to tinker too much with the batting style of some batters, no matter how unorthodox it might be, precisely because that will rob them of their mojo, their special sauce, their own very unique ability to rip a bowling attack to shreds. Pant falls firmly in that category. But when he is thinking of one too many things that he has to do or plan or execute, other than just facing the next delivery, that could be a recipe for disaster. And that is, what I think we are witnessing in IPL 2025 this time.
So, what can he do?
Can Stepping Down Be The Answer?
Pant could, potentially, give up LSG captaincy next season. Simple as that. There's no shame in doing that. Some of the best players in the history of the game have not been able to cope with the extra responsibility of leading a team.
Pant should, in fact, look at someone like Virat Kohli. Over the years, despite being a very successful captain, Virat too realised just how crippling a responsibility captaincy can be, and he began to step away from these roles. He gave up India T20i captaincy, RCB captaincy, Test captaincy. Though most people suspected that it was because of the almost unnatural pressure that comes with leading a cricket team, especially in a country like India, Virat himself confirmed that in an official RCB podcast when he said, “I captained India for seven to eight years, and RCB for nine. There were expectations on me as a batter every single game. I never felt the attention was off me. If not captaincy, it was my batting. I was exposed to it 24x7. It got very tough and too much in the end.”
What Next For LSG And Pant?
When I see Pant walking off dejected after being dismissed for a low score, game after game, this IPL season, those are the words that ring in my ears, and I can see Pant going through a similar phase. There's no doubt that Virat found himself to be in a much better headspace after he took a step back, when he offloaded some of the weight off his shoulders. Despite retiring from T20Is and Test cricket, Virat the batter is unstoppable. Pant needs to take a long, hard look at where he is and ask himself if he needs to take that tough call too.
Having said that, for Pant to step away from captaincy might not be easy. Every team owner and management expect a certain return on investment, and having that hypothetical discussion with the ownership and management team will be difficult for Pant. Does he himself think that giving up captaincy will benefit him? Has he asked himself that tough question?
The Way Forward
LSG expected fireworks from Pant from the word go, both as batter and captain. After all, they had come frustratingly close to winning the title after hitting the ground running in their first season in 2022 - making the playoffs before losing in the Eliminator to RCB. Then in their second season, the team suffered the same fate - once again losing in the Eliminator - against the Mumbai Indians. Their third season saw them finish seventh after the league stage in 2024. When the last mega auction happened, the team zeroed in on Rishabh Pant as their main player target and captain, finally securing his services for a historic fee of Rs. 27 crore. They also bought other big-name players like Nicholas Pooran, Mitchell Marsh, David Miller and Aiden Markram to put together a formidable batting line-up. But big names alone aren't enough for IPL success. Just ask the KKR squad of 2008. LSG were also hit by a number of player injuries, which didn't help their cause. The bottom line is that the team once again failed to make the playoffs cut. And the buck, as we all know, often stops with the captain. The spotlight is relentless, the scrutiny can be unbearable. Every single action of a captain, especially of a team which is not doing very well, is put under the microscope. And that is mentally taxing.
When the post-season post-mortem happens, LSG should, among other things, look at Rishabh Pant's workload. Finding another captain in a team full of superstars won't be very hard. Mitchell Marsh is the current Australia T20i captain. Provided Pant himself is willing, of course, maybe the team should let him focus on his wicket-keeping and batting roles – the two skills which made him a household name. Rishabh Pant, the batter - firing on all cylinders - is what we all want to see.
(The author is a former sports editor and primetime sports news anchor. He is currently a columnist, features writer and stage actor)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
