The fifth Test between England and India got underway on July 1 at Edgbaston and the hero of the day proved to be India’s Rishabh Pant, as the keeper-batter hammered the opposition bowling after Ben Stokes won the toss and put India in to bat.
James Anderson with three wickets, that of Shubman Gill (17), Cheteshwar Pujara (13), and Shreyas Iyer (15) pegged India back as Matthew Potts dismissed Hanuma Vihari for 20 and then got the big scalp of Virat Kohli, who only managed 11 runs, leaving India 98/5.
Rishabh Pant and Ravindra Jadeja then got together and added 222 runs for the sixth wicket, the joint highest by India against England in Tests. While Pant went after the England bowlers, Jadeja gave him the assurance that he will hold onto his end no matter what happened.
This resulted in Rishabh Pant smashing a belligerent 146 in just 111 balls with a strike rate of 131.53 and the knock included 19 fours and 4 sixes. He hit some audacious shots in his knock bringing up his century in just 89 balls, the fastest by an Indian wicketkeeper in Test cricket.
During his amazing knock, Rishabh Pant also completed 2,000 runs in Test cricket.
He fell to Joe Root, trying to maximize the score of his team, and then Shardul Thakur fell to Stokes for 1 run.
In the end, India finished day one on 338/7 with Ravindra Jadeja unbeaten on 83 and Mohammad Shami yet to open his account.
The cricket fraternity was all in awe of Rishabh Pant’s aggressive century to bring back India into the game after a tough morning session and lauded the youngster wholeheartedly on Twitter.
Here are some tweets:
