Rishabh Pant didn’t seem too bothered about missing out on a hundred in the ongoing second Test between India and Bangladesh in Dhaka on Friday. Team India’s star wicketkeeper-keeper played a superb knock on Day 2 in Dhaka and took the India team out of trouble. Pant fell 7 runs short of his sixth Test hundred as he got out in the 90s for the sixth time in the longest format.
Pant, though, remains unbothered by the conversion rate. When asked by former India women’s captain Anjum Chopra if the ‘nervous 90s’ are impact Pant, the wicketkeeper-batter insisted that he doesn’t care much about the “landmarks” and he is more bothered about the team’s performance.
“As an individual, I don’t think about the landmark so much. Three figures are just a number for me, I try to play out the situation most of the times. If it happens, it’s good. If it doesn’t, can’t control that. As an individual, I am fine because I knew I was batting well. I didn’t capitalize and I missed my hundred, but happy that Shreyas Iyer and I got our team out of trouble,” Pant was quoted as saying.
India heading toward the victory
Talking about the match, Bangladesh won the toss and opted to bat first in the second Test match. The Bangla Tigers didn’t have a good time with the bat as they were bowled out for 227 runs in the first innings of the match with Mominul Haque being the top-scorer as he played a brilliant knock of 84 runs. However, he couldn’t get support from any other batters from the other end.
Indian bowlers put up a great show with the ball as Umesh Yadav and Ravichandran Ashwin bagged 4 wickets each while Jaydev Unadkat who made his comeback after 12 years took 2 wickets. Coming in to bat in the 2nd inning India too had a bad start as out-of-form KL Rahul disappointed the fans once again as he got out for only 10 runs. Shreyas Iyer and Pant stitched a 159-run partnership and helped India to take some lead before the whole team got out.
Bangladesh again had a bad start in the 3rd inning as well. They were in trouble as the team lost 6 wickets on only 113. But the partnership between Nurul Hasan and Litton Das helped Bangladesh fight back and shifted the momentum in their favour. Once Nurul departed, it was the partnership between Litton and Taskin Ahmed that stretched the lead further and set the target of 145 for India.
