By Khabar Rojana 
Rishabh Pant has been out of the Indian white-ball teams for quite some time now. He had a poor IPL 2025, with his century against the RCB being the only saving grace. Meanwhile, a former Indian cricketer gave his opinion on Pant’s absence from the T20I side.
Former India cricketer Aakash Chopra gave his views on Rishabh Pant’s T20I absence, weighing in for the left-handed wicketkeeper batter being the third-highest run-scorer in the T20 World Cup 2024.
Pant made a miraculous return to the Indian team during the T20 World Cup 2024 following his horrific car crash in late December 2022. He missed the Indian Premier League 2023 but made a strong return in 2024 before earning a recall for the T20I team in the World Cup in New York and the Caribbean, which India won.
The wicketkeeper batter had an impressive World Cup and was the third-highest run-scorer for the Men in Blue with 171 runs to his name. However, he played only in the Sri Lanka series following the World Cup and has been running out of the Indian white-ball teams and is not in the Indian side for the Asia Cup 2025.
Meanwhile, former Indian cricketer Chopra gave his views on the absence of Pant from the T20I setup. “When Rishabh Pant bats at Nos. 1 to 3, he has scored his runs at a strike rate of 156 and has an average of 34, which is good. However, we will not talk about the top three. When you look at Nos. 4 to 7, he has a strike rate of 140 and an average of 30. It’s still okay,” Chopra said on his YouTube channel.
“The one thing that goes in his favour, and I am very surprised that no one talks about it, is that he was India’s third-highest run-scorer in the T20 World Cup we won. It seems like a fly has been taken out of milk and thrown away. No one is talking about him. Of course, the IPL not being that good might be one of the reasons, but not even coming into the conversation is a strange one,” Chopra added.
Pant had a poor IPL 2025 for Lucknow Super Giants after being roped in for a record sum of Rs 27 crore. He made 269 runs at an ordinary average of 24.45 and a strike rate of 133.16. Notably, 118 of those runs came in his team’s last league stage game against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru, when he had slammed a century.
Raveena Kumari