HARDIK PANDYA- 4/10
Hardik Pandya scored 164 runs in 4 Tests he played with a best of 52* and took 10 wickets with a best of 5/28. Apart from these performances, his big contribution was in the Nottingham Test win where he picked his career-best five-wicket haul and scored a fifty.
But experts couldn’t find anything special with Pandya, who apart from that failed mostly to make any significant impact in the series. Much was expected from him in the series, but apart from bits and pieces performances, Pandya couldn’t contribute more to the team.
DINESH KARTHIK- 0/10
Dinesh Karthik was given an opportunity of a lifetime in absence of no.1 choice wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha, who was ruled out for a long time due to injury. Karthik was included in the Test series ahead of Parthiv Patel, who had kept wickets in South Africa but didn’t do well both behind and in front of stumps.
Karthik had a very good limited overs experience behind him in recent times, including the match-winning cameo in the Nidahas Trophy final in Sri Lanka.
Karthik, unfortunately, found the England bowlers too hard to handle in front of the stumps. He scored 26 runs in four innings, including two ducks to his name. Behind the stumps too, the late movement of the ball after passing the batsmen troubled him to no end and he dropped a couple of important chances.
His attempt at flamboyance behind the stumps resulted in byes and overall, the expectations from him were not met and team management brought in Rishabh Pant for the third Test. This can truly be a chance that Karthik will regret as a decent enough performance would have helped him cement his place for Australia tour as well.
RISHABH PANT- 3/10
Rishabh Pant was asked to stay back for the last three Tests of the series as Dinesh Karthik’s performance both in front and in back of the stumps wasn’t satisfactory and Pant got his debut in Nottingham.
Pant started bravely with a second ball six being his first scoring shot in Test cricket. However, failures in Southampton meant that he was criticized a bit. Behind the stumps, he created a record with seven catches in his first Test. But the keeping technique was flawed and it resulted in a lot of byes during the last two Tests.
However, overall for a 20-year-old, Pant kept very well to the moving ball and his biggest moment came when he became the first Indian wicketkeeper to score a hundred in England and in the fourth innings of a Test match. His 114 in the chase of 464 runs was amazing and it at one time raised hopes of an unlikely Indian win.
The future for the young Pant is bright and with a huge learning curve ahead of him, Pant looks like a good prospect to nurture with better wicket keeping advice and practice.
