Rishabh Pant is copping heavy criticism for his rash shot against Marco Jansen, but the South African wrecker-in-chief believes that with better execution, the narrative around the flamboyant keeper could have been very different.
When India were struggling at 102/4, Pant gave Jansen the charge. The ball climbed on Pant and took the edge into the keeper’s gloves because the tall bowler had kept it short of length.
When asked if Pant’s choice of shot shocked him, Jansen said, “It’s not that things will always be going your way.”
“So there are times where Rishabh Pant would have hit that one fifty rows back, straight back over my head and then we would be having a different conversation,” Jansen told reporters after the end of day’s play.
Jansen was forced to experiment with bouncers on Day 3 after realizing early in the Indian first innings that there was neither nip in the air nor off-the-surface movement.
Jansen did the star turn with the ball as well, taking 6/48 in India’s pitiful first innings score of 201 after taking South Africa near 500 (489) with an outstanding 93 off 91 balls on Day 2.
With the exception of Kuldeep Yadav, five of his six victims were out to short balls, and he demonstrated to the Indian attack what “Plan B” meant on an ineffective track.
“To be honest, the ball wasn’t nipping as much like in Kolkata so we had to figure out a plan. When I got my first wicket (Dhruv Jurel) with a bouncer, we said, ‘okay cool, let’s see how long this is going to work for’ and yeah, it just came off,” Jansen said.
Jansen expressed a different opinion, referring to the Barsapara pitch as a “sporting one,” while Kuldeep had described it as a “road.”
“It’s a good wicket to bat on. There’s good pace, good bounce if you play the short ball well, you’ll score runs and if you bowl well, you’ll get wickets.”
However, once the ball softened, he went out of the attack and only returned to claim his final two wickets after the second new ball was taken.
“After that spell of mine, it felt like the ball was a bit softer. It wasn’t getting up and it didn’t have that zip if it makes sense and then as soon as we took the new ball, the bounce was still there but because it was a new ball it was getting on quite nicely so we tried and use that to our advantage.”
The preparation and how the training pitches offered in Guwahati resembled the real match pitch, which is a kind of rarity, was one of the conversation’s relatively minor points.
“The training facilities here was very much the same or similar to the playing wicket which I think is very nice as a player because you can sort of prepare well. You can wrap your head around how the wicket might play and because of that, you can maximize on your preparation.”
Jansen has been a well-known Proteas player in the subcontinent thanks to the IPL and other white-ball assignments, but he acknowledges that he hasn’t been able to reach his full potential until the current Test. This is because of the tracks’ characteristics, which prevented him from getting leg before and bowling because of the bounce his 6-foot-8-inch frame produced.
“For me, I’ve always struggled bowling in India whether it was white ball or red ball. I am still jealous of people who get the ball to nip back because like yesterday, it was a perfect example ball goes over off stump because I’m so tall from a different bowler like KG (Rabada) that’s hitting top of off, for example so I’ve always been jealous of those people where they’re a bit shorter than me.”
“When there’s a wicket with a bit of pace and bounce, then I get to extract more out of it so I just think, especially here I’ve tried to learn what’s going to work for me what’s going to help me to perform to the best of my ability,” he said.
“It’s just one of those days where everything clicks and everything works and as a player, those days you take it and you run,” he added.
