Veteran Indian batsman Suresh Raina on Tuesday (August 4) showered rich praise on Rishabh Pant, saying the young wicketkeeper-batsman is a gun player and can do wonders for the national team.

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Pant, who was touted as MS Dhoni’s successor, saw several ups and downs in 2019 and lost his place in the white-ball side to KL Rahul in 2020.

Speaking on the ‘Follow the Blues’ segment of this week’s episode of Star Sports’ chat show Cricket Connected, Raina said: “I think Rishabh Pant has been amazing. He has scored a lot of runs for the country as well as in the IPL and in domestic cricket. He has got two Test hundreds. He played really well in T20s as well as ODIs.”

“I think he is a gun player, he has a quality future. He needs to be really looked after by his teammates. And then you will see lot of great performances coming from him very soon,” he added.

Raina has been training alongside some of his Indian teammates in Ghaziabad lately.

Giving an insight of the training session, the southpaw said: “I have been practising with Rishabh Pant. He was hitting the ball very well. Then I had a net with Shami. All bowlers have been coming here and practising. Piyush Chawla also came, he bowled really well.”

“I have been speaking to a lot of the players, everything has been planned. Deepak Chahar has been playing and MS Dhoni is also training hard at his home. Everyone has to do it because this game requires lot of fitness, lot of commitment,” he further remarked.

When quizzed about the preparation plans for the upcoming IPL season in UAE, Raina replied: “We are going to have a camp. We have lots to do, we are going there I think 18-20 days before. It is good to go early because IPL is coming and we have been under lockdown for 4-5 months. So, it is good to be there before IPL and it is going to be exciting.”